Protist storm front

[kinase]

Here is a culture of a bunch of ancyromonads. These are from a nikon DSLR attached to the trinocular part of a regular inverted scope, all are phase contrast. And they go in increasing magnification, with a 4x objective, then 10x, then 40x.

The first image shows the central zone there being inhabited by a lot of bacteria. What appears to form a ring around it is actually a "storm front" of protists that are slowly making their way across the bacteria inhabited zones and eating them as they go by.


Here you can see them trying to close the gap, and that the bacteria is dense in the middle. This objective always looks pretty blue in phase.


And here you can really see that they don't leave so much bacteria behind them in comparison to whats in front of them. They're moving from left to right here.


And here's a video, it'd be cool to do a time lapse.

[zzffnn]

Interesting.

Why do you culture them - for phylogenomics or cytoskeleton research?

What culture media do you use (I assume it is not RPMI 1640?) and do you feed them bacteria as major energy source?

[gekko]

Interesting. What is the purpose of this experiment? What are the protists that you use?

[kinase]

I don't currently have any experiments running with these, this is just a maintenance culture to keep them going until someone needs them but there was genetic analysis carried out for phylogeny purposes at some point. They're cultured as a just that ancyromonad with whatever bacteria came with the culture at the time, they eat them as a primary food source. The media is a seawater based medium with something called ceraphyl which as I understand it, is just the supernatant from some crushed up grass or seaweed that was boiled.

I'll have to get a picture or video of some other protist I know of, I'm not sure of the name or if it has one yet. It's something I'd really like to do cytoskeletal research on. It looks like a one of those racing canoes and it rows itself forward like someone would a rowboat. It lives on surfaces though, I'm not sure if it uses it's arms to pull itself by grabbing the ground or if it just pushes them through the water without hitting the ground. Sadly we don't have a culture of this, it died out, apparently it's pretty hard to keep.