Algae - building bodies from balls, chains, sheets and tubes
Volvox
- ball-shaped colony
The theme of this article is the algae or protoplants. In addition to explaining general and some specific aspects of algal biology, this page concentrates on the theme of building bodies. Algae illustrate many different ways in which single cells can evolve into more complex and larger multicellular forms by certain key modifications. The diversity of algae is astonishing and only a few examples can be covered here.
Building
bodies - spheres
Algae
demonstrate well some of the different approaches to building
multicellular bodies - there are a number of ways to construct a 3D
body from cells. Cells can be joined together to form chains
(essentially 1D organisms) or more precisely remain joined together
when they reproduce by cell division. If all the cells divide in the
same plane, then a chain will result. By dividing sometimes in a
second plane at right angles to the first, a 2D sheet of cells may
be produced (see Ulva and Porphyra below). Volvox is a green alga that
consists of a hollow ball of cells, which is essentially a 2D colony
or sheet folded around and joined together. Each ball, or coenobium, consists of a single
layer of superficial cells - it is a colony of cells. Each cell is
surrounded by a thick mucilaginous wall, forming an enclosing cell.
In some species, these mucilaginous walls may extend toward the
centre of the ball and almost completely fill it. Each cell sits on
the surface of the sphere and bears two flagella which protrude into the
surrounding water and beat to propel the whole colony through the
water. Each cell has a red eyespot (stigma) which forms part of a
photosensor. Volvox, like other algae, is
photosynthetic and so it has to keep itself illuminated and so it
will swim toward the light (or away from very bright lights that may
damage its chlorophyll). This immediately poses a problem - if each
cell beats its flagella independently of the others then the colony
will move nowhere, rather they must coordinate themselves so as to
beat in unison. To achieve this coordination, all the cells are
connected to their nearest neighbors by protoplasmic
bridges,
such that all the cell cytoplasms are continuous with one another
through these bridges. This allows waves of electric charge to
travel throughout the colony, triggering flagella motion in an
organized and controlled manner.
The number of cells present in Volvox and related genera (which
form a group called the Volvocales); Gonium forms flat plates with 4
or 16 cells, Pandorina forms a sphere of 16
cells. The number of cells in the larger Volvox is always a power of two,
and may number several thousand, a result of coordinated cell
division with all cells dividing and doubling in unison. The Volvox
ball has a preferred front-end and cells in this part of the sphere
have larger eyespots than the rest. Chlamydomonas is an example of an alga
comprising a single cell that resembles a cell from a Volvox
colony.
Reproduction
in Volvox
Volvox can
reproduce asexually by forming daughter
colonies.
Daughter colonies form as hollow balls of cells inside the parental
colony. The daughter colonies form from enlarged cells in the
surface of the parent colony, called gonidia, at the posterior end of
the colony. Each gonidium divides repeatedly in a plane at
right-angles to the surface of the parent coenobium, forming a
cup-shaped plate of cells. Divisions continue and the plate forms a
small spherical daughter colony inside the parent colony and
suspended from its surface. The daughter colonies are originally
formed inside-out, with their flagella pointing inwards, and
invaginate or invert, often at around the time that they escape from
the parent colony which ruptures and dies, releasing the daughters
which are miniature versions of the parent and grow by cell
division. Daughter colonies may contain small granddaughter colonies
upon hatching.
Some species are monoecious (hermaphroditic) whilst others are
dioecious (with two separate sexes). In dioecious forms, sexual
reproduction begins when some male colonies appear and secrete
pheromones that induce the gonidia of other colonies to undergo
sexual rather than asexual reproduction. The gonidia of colonies of
female clones (descended or cloned by asexual reproduction from a
mother colony) are stimulated to develop into female daughter
colonies at the posterior of the parent colony. In colonies of male
lineages (descended or cloned by asexual reproduction from a father
colony) the gonidia are stimulated to develop into male colonies.
Female colonies produce specialised egg
cells -
enlarged superficial cells at the posterior of the colony and which
lack flagella and remain attached to neighbouring cells by the
protoplasmic bridges. Male colonies produce packets of spermatozoids, also at the posterior of
the colony. These form much like daughter colonies in asexual
reproduction - a superficial cell divides to produce a hollow ball
of cells hanging down from the wall into the interior of the
coenobium. These cells are naked (lack cell walls) and flagellated
and are originally inside-out but invert so that their flagella
point outwards. These cells detach from the parent colony and swim
towards egg cells, which are immotile and remain bound to the female
colonies. This is oogamy - large immotile egg cells are
formed, toward which the sperm swim. The gametes are produced by
mitosis, so the parent coenobia are haploid. When a spermatozoid
fertilises an egg cell, a thick-walled hypnozygote is formed. A hypnozygote
is a diploid cell formed by fertilisation (zygotes) which enters a
mandatory dormant stage. It has a thick spiny wall to protect the
zygote within.
The possession of dormant stages is particularly important to
freshwater organisms that live in ephemeral ponds. If a pond dries
or freezes, then the dormant stages can survive until better
conditions for growth return. After dormancy, the Volvox hypnozygote undergoes
meiosis and germinates to produce a haploid zoid which undergoes
mitosis to form a new coenobium. The zygote is the only diploid
stage, making Volvox an example of what is
called a haplont.
Above: Chlamydomonas with a detailed version on the right and simpler versions thumbnailed on the left. A, mitochondrion; B, cell wall; C, thylakoid membrane of chloroplast; D, cell-surface membrane; E, flagellum x 2; F, vesicle/vacuole or storage granule; G, nucleus; H, Golgi apparatus; I, (cup-shaped) chloroplast, and J, starch grains. One of the morphologically simplest single-celled algae is Chlorella, which grows on walls and tree bark.
Click for a most simplified version of the Chlamydomonas diagram
Click for the simplified version of the Chlamydomonas diagram
Building
bodies - filaments
Many algae
are filaments - chains of cells that form when the plane of cell
division is fixed resulting in a '1D' colony. Many bacterial and
fungal forms are filamentous and one of the advantages is that it
allows organisms to reach above the substratum (surface) and through
the boundary layer (a layer of almost motionless fluid that forms
around all solid objects in a fluid) and obtain a good supply of
nutrients in the flowing water and to shed spores into the faster
moving air or water. Some filamentous cyanobacteria (photosynthetic
bacteria that are sometimes called the blue-green algae) live inside
slime tubes that they secrete for themselves and they can glide up
an down inside this tube, positioning themselves higher in the water
column when needed. See the pdf book chapter
for more advantages of being filamentous to bacteria. An advantage
of being multicellular is that different cells can specialize to
perform different functions.
See
Cyanobacteria for more
details on the prokaryotic blue-green algae.
Bacteria - study more about
bacteria, including cyanobacteria. Filamentous bacteria are covered
in more
detail here.
Spirogyra
Spirogyra, illustrated above in a 3D
mathematical computer model (Pov-Ray) is a green alga which forms
filamentous chains of cells, which float freely in ponds and other
bodies of still water. Each cell has a distinctive and
characteristic spiral green chloroplast. Many cells will typically
be joined in long filamentous chains. Spirogyra lives in freshwater ponds
and wet drainage ditches and the like.
Above: micrograph of Spirogyra conjugating (fixed permanent preparation). Far right: A Spirogyra cell (fixed permanent prep.) - click to enlarge.
Scenedesmus
Scenedesmus is a beautiful organism to observe under your microscope! The large pyrenoids (for starch synthesis) inside the large green chloroplasts are clearly visible. Flotation helps keep the cells at the surface near the valuable sunlight, and flotation will also help disperse the organism and the spines probably also provide some protection against predators by making the organism larger. Indeed, Scenedesmus often grows as single-cells in culture (each cell often possessing 4 spines) but chemicals released by predators are detected by Scenedesmus (which are too large for many predators) and this induces the formation of longer chains of cells and larger colonies, an effect which has been empirically shown to reduce losses to predation. However, the larger colonies sink more easily and so this defense comes at a cost, which is why in the absence of predators single cells dominate. As a further aid to dispersion, Scenedesmus produces wall-less biflagellate zoospores or gametes (smaller cells, about 5 micrometers long with a chloroplast but no pyrenoid) that swim in the water and if two compatible zoospores meet then they fuse in fertilisation to form a zygote and a new Scenedesmus. In addition to this mode of sexual reproduction, Scenedesmus reproduces asexually by producing a miniature autocolony by division of each protoplast inside the parent cell wall. The wall of the parent cell then splits and the autocolony emerges. In addition to the spines, which are often confined to the end cells, the middle cells may bear long fine bristles. These bristles possibly assist in flotation.
Scenedesmus is a green alga that forms small colonies equipped with spines for flotation. The morphology varies with conditions and species, but this arrangement of 4 cells with 4 spines is quite common. Each cell is about 10 micrometres long. [3D Pov-Ray model].
The spines are flotation devices, keeping the colony floating high in the water column near the source of light needed for photosynthesis. This may seem surprising, but at this microscopic scale water behaves much like treacle (low Reynold's number) and spines are efficient flotation devices.
Sea-Lettuce
- Ulva lactuca
Sea-lettuce, Ulva lactuca is a seaweed of rocky shores (upper, middle and lower shores). Its thallus or frond is a thin bright-green translucent sheet of varied shape anchored by a holdfast and sometimes a short stalk (stipe) though in some locations this seaweed survives as a free-floating weed. Size varies from 5 to 5o cm, sometimes over one metre in length. The thallus is only two cells thick.
Below: a section through an Ulva frond. Two sheets of closely spaced photosynthetic cells make up the frond (Ulva is said to be distromatic). Each cell has a single cup-shaped chloroplast which is parietal (lies in the margin of the cell) and during the day is positioned facing the surface, to intercept the sunlight for photosynthesis. At night the chloroplasts move, typically sitting at one of the long edges of the cell. Some of the cells, especially those in the stalk, give out multinucleate hyphal-like appendages called rhizoids, which strengthen the stalk.
Isogamy
is the production of identical male and female gametes, and although
Ulva is often described as
isogamous, the female gametes are actually considerably larger and Ulva
is more correctly described as anisogamous (producing distinctly
different male and female gametes).
The zygoge germinates to produce a diploid sporophyte, which is
identical in appearance to the gametophytes. The sporophyte,
however, produces haploid zoospores by meiosis, each zoospore is
quadriflagellate (has 4 flagella) and germinates into a gametophyte
thallus.
Both the immature gametophytes and sporophytes develop first into a
uniseriate filamentous juvenile stage > with rhizoids (shown
above) by repeated mitosis - uniseriate means that the filament is
comprised of a single column of cells.
Growth is intercallary (occurring at areas
throughout the length of the frond rather than the base or apex
only) as any of the cells can divide. The plane of division is
always at right angles to the surface of the thallus, so that there
are always two sheets of cells.
All the vegetative cells along the margin of the thallus can
reproduce by spore formation. There are two genetic forms of Ulva
- a haploid generation with only one complete set of chromosomes (n)
called the gametophyte and a diploid sporophyte generation with two
complete sets of chromosoems (2n). These generations alternate
throughout the life-cycle (alternation of generations).
The gametophytes produces haploid wall-less (naked) spores by
mitosis, and these spores are the gametes. Female weeds produce
female gametes and male weeds male gametes (Ulva is dioecious - the sexes are separate).
The gametes are biflagellate (they have two flagella). A male and
female gamete fuse in a process of anisogamous
fertilisation.
The gametes are produced inside the vegatative cell walls and escape
into the sea via pores - each vegetative parent cell forming a pore
connecting it to the outside surface.
Later
on the cells divide in a second plane and a multiseriate filament
(made of several columns of cells is produced) followed by a hollow
tubular stage. This then expands and flattens to form the sheet-like
mature thallus. Enteromorpha is a closely related form
that consists of hollow tubes, each made from a single sheet of
cells, apparently Enteromorpha passes through a young
sheet-like, Ulva-like stage but then the
two cell sheets separate and curve around to form cylinders. Ulvaria,
another closely related form, passes through an Enteromorpha-like tubular form which
splits open at the upper end to form a sheet that is only one cell
thick (monostromatic). These species are closely related and
hybrid-forms are known. These species all develop from a young
filamentous stage, which suggests that they evolved from such forms
(often, though not always, the development of an organism resembles
the evolutionary stages that it went through as evolutionary
progress can occur when genetic changes modify the developmental
process, and one such modification is to extend the development by
adding additional stages on to the end of it). Thus, we have seen
how single-cells that fails to divide completely can evolve into
multicellular filaments, like Spirogyra, and how adding in an
additional plane of division can produce sheets and cylinders. The
most complex seaweeds are types of brown algae (Phaeophyceae) not
green algae like Chlamydomonas, Volvox, Spirogyra, Scenedesmus and Ulva.
A
myriad of colours
There are
many types of algae, but three of the main divisions are the
green-algae or Chlorophyta (like Volvox, Chlamydomonas, Spirogyra, Scenedesmus and Ulva), the brown algae and the
red algae. All contain a type of chlorophyll called chlorophyll-a to trap sunlight for
photosynthesis, but additional pigments give the algae there various
colours and expand the range of wavelengths or colours of light that
can be used for photosynthesis. Green algae also contain
chlorophyll-b and carotenes, especially beta-carotene (whose orange
colour is masked by the green chlorophyll). Brown algae contain
traces of chlorophyll c and a brown pigment called fucoxanthin. Red
algae contain traces of chlorophyll-d, beta-carotene and a red
pigment called phcoerythrin.
The blue-green algae or cyanobacteria, like Anabaena, have chlorophyll-a,
beta-carotene and the blue pigment phycocyanin. there is a group
called the golden or golden-brown algae, which contain chlorophyll-a
and beta-carotene.
Siphonaceous
Algae
So
far we have looked at unicellular algae, simple colonial and
filamentous algae and sheet-like seaweeds (and more complex brown
seaweeds) that are beginning to resemble plants in complexity and
design. One major body-type that has not yet been considered are the
siphonaceous algae. These consist of single large multinucleate
cells, often with tubular form and with peripheral cytoplasm
and large central vacuoles. Caulerpa is one of the most
plant-like of these forms; it consists of a long rhizome tube from
which branch root-like rhizoids and leaf-like, sometimes
feather-like, fronds. The whole structure can be several meters long
and each frond several centimeters in height and yet it is a single
cell. Struts project from the cell wall into the cytoplasm to give
it additional mechanical strength and in rougher waters these
trabeculae increase in development. This suggests the reason why
most complex algae have adopted multicellularity - it gives tissues
mechanical strength. Both the formation of an enlarged multinucleate
cell by nuclear division without cytoplasmic division and
multicellularity result from modifications to cell division. In the
former, there is nuclear division without cytoplasmic division and
in the latter by a failure of the cells to separate completely after
cell division.
The whorl of fertile sac-like gametangia, which may be fused together, forms the disc or umbrella. These are attached to short basal segments, representing lateral branches that bear the gametangia. the basal segments bear small projections that may or may not bear hairs on their upper surface, forming a corona (below). An inferior corona may also be present in some species. One or more whorls of sterile branches also occur about the stem but these are often shed to leave an annular scar around the stem (not currently shown in this model). A corona is present in Acetabularia acetabulum.
Above:
A 3D Pov-Ray computer model of the reproductive stage of Acetabularia, without and with terminal
hairs (which may or may not be present). Acetabularia is also called the
Mermaid's Wineglass or the Mermaid's Cup and is
essentially a single-celled alga that can grow to about 5 cm in
height. The vegetative stage consists of the stalk and anchoring
rhizoids with whorls of branched hairs along the stalk. These hairs
generally drop-off by the time the reproductive cap or umbel forms.
A single giant nucleus is situated at the base of the stalk and this
produces and sends out smaller nuclei that migrate to the developing
cap to become incorporated into the cap rays where they develop into
spores. There is a large central vacuole throughout the cell. When
mature, the cap becomes divided (by a cross wall) from the stem and
then constitutes a separate cellular system. Different species can
be identified by the number of fleshy rays and the degree to which
the rays are free, fused together or fused at their bases only.
In Acetabularia
mediterranea (= Acetabularia acetabulum) the thallus
reaches maturity after 2 or 3 years or more. Each year the aerial
part dies, leaving the rhizoidal base or a perennating organ
embedded in the substrate and which consists of a lobed outgrowth
from the rhizoid system. The perennating organ which puts out a new
stem each year, bearing whorls of sterile branches (hairs). When
mature, it puts out a stem with one sterile wall which falls away
(it is deciduous) and one fertile whorl that forms the umbrella.
Each gamtangium in the umbrella produces multinucleate cysts which
are released when the tip of the gametangium disintegrates. The
cysts act as propagules and in the spring these cysts liberate
gametes (through a lid or operculum which opens at one end).
The biflagellate gametes are either isogametes (male and
female gametes the same size) or anisogametes (the female gametes
being larger) depending on species (they are isogametes in A.
mediterranea). They fuse in compatible (male and female) pairs
to form a zygote. The zygote grows and develops into a young
thallus, with a giant diploid nucleus situated in the base. When
mature this giant nucleus reduces in size, undergoes meiosis and
then the daughter nuclei undergo repeated mitosis to produce some 20
000 tiny haploid nuclei that are transported up the stalk to the
gametangia to be incorporated into the cysts.
Brown seaweeds - the most complex algae.
Article
updated: 22 July 2022