cytofocus

Alan Crivellaro (Italian, b.1990)

Microscopic colour-stained sections of wood - 2007

Installation at "True to Nature: Open-air Painting in Europe 1780-1870" exhibition, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 2022

Root of Osmunda cinnamomea. The anatomy of woody plants. 1917.

Radiolaria, a type of protozoa known for its complex shell structure, from Marvels of the Universe v.2.

Happy Phycology Friday! This week’s featured friend is Licmophora juergensii…growing on Polysiphonia, a type of red algae! I know I’ve featured this pair before, but I just had a sudden urge to do a watercolour version. L. juergensii is an epiphytic, marine diatom. Epiphytes are organisms that grow on the surfaces of plants/algae without being parasitic. Members of the genus Licmophora form fan-shaped colonies. 

(Polysiphonia will get its own feature…someday) 

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Tau-ism 101

The cause or causes of Alzheimer’s disease remain hotly debated and debatable, but much evidence points to two particular factors: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

The former are bits of protein that accumulate and clump together in and around neurons, disabling cell-to-cell signaling and perhaps activating an immune response that triggers inflammation and destruction of disabled cells. This is the so-called amyloid hypothesis.

This is what I do with bouquets people get me now, a day of appreciation as a bouquet - then chopped/dissected and pressed.

Not a bad day spent :)

Pediastrum algae with Spirulina cyanobacteria in the background. The little spikes on the outer cells of the Pediastrum are used to stay afloat near the surface of the water. Also, if you look closely, you can see the nucleus inside the cells. 

Although both are photosynthetic microorganisms, cyanobacteria tend to be significantly smaller in size compared to eukaryotic algae (as you can see in this photo).

oo28oo requested some eukaryotic algae pictures, so I figured I’d post some of my favorite ones I’ve found over the years! The individual names of the algae will pop up if you click on the photos 

As I mentioned before, many of these algae came from slimy and disgusting clumps of pond scum. They usually smelled pretty horrible, too! It’s only when you look at them under the microscope that you see the true beauty.

Stomata

WHAT’S THAT? Found on the underside of leaves, stomata are like pores in our skin. They are tiny openings that allow for gas exchange so plants can make food and cool off from heat. In this magnified image of a wandering jew plant, stomata (in green) are surrounded by leaf cells (in purple).

WHAT’S THE LATEST? Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere have been increasing decade after decade, and plants aren’t sure how to deal with it. When CO2 levels are high, plants reduce their number of stomata. With less stomata, plants can’t cool off by releasing water to evaporate, so they die from heat stress during heat waves and droughts. Researchers at UC San Diego have found a new genetic pathway that controls stomata numbers in response to CO2 levels, which could help scientists engineer plants that can withstand harsh conditions in changing climates.