AlgaeAlgaeMicrobiology 2314

CharacteristicsCharacteristics

• Eukaryotic• Mostly Photosynthetic

(Photoautotrophs)• Require Moisture• Microscopic and Macroscopic• Accessory Pigments Give Color• Lack Vascular Tissue• Sexual and Asexual Reproduction

Red AlgaeRed Algae

• Extremely Old / > 2 Billion Years

• 4000 Species• Tropical and Warm Waters• No Flagella• Phycoerythrin• Irish Moss (Blanca Mange)• Nori• Coralline Algae

Red algae are red because of the presence of the pigment phycoerythrin; this pigment reflects red light and absorbs blue light. Because blue light penetrates water to a greater depth than light of longer wavelengths, these pigments allow red algae to photosynthesize and live at somewhat greater depths than most other "algae".

Agar is isolated from the red alga Gelidium

These reef-building rhodophytes are called coralline algae, because they secrete a hard shell of carbonate around themselves, in much the same way that corals do.

Because of their ability to secrete calcium carbonate, calcareous red algae have a better fossil record than many other groups of algal protists. Most limestone deposits of reef origin consist largely of the skeletons of coralline algae, and because these are often associated with petroleum deposits, there has been a great deal of attention focused on these fossils.

Giant clam encrusted with coralline red algae.

When was the Irish Potato When was the Irish Potato Famine?Famine?

Potato BlightPotato Blight• Ireland Mid 1800’s

• >1,000,000 People Starved to Death

• It began with a blight of the potato crop that left acre upon acre of Irish farmland covered with black rot. As harvests across Europe failed, the price of food soared. Subsistence-level Irish farmers found their food stores rotting in their cellars, the crops they relied on to pay the rent to their British and Protestant landlords destroyed.

FactsFacts

• Potatoes were the staple food• Potatoes fed people, pigs, horses, cows,

chickens• Men who did hard physical work often ate

4-5 pounds of potatoes per day and were sometimes even paid in potatoes

• 35% of all agricultural soil was used for the cultivation of potatoes

FactsFacts• The Blight did not start in Ireland but in the

United States.

• Flanders imported new potato strains for America (they were diseased).

• Spread from Flanders to Belgium, to the Netherlands, to England to Ireland.

• Ireland was hardest hit because the number of families to feed in Ireland simply outstripped the ability of the Irish soil to feed them.

• The Irish population was hit by one of the severest winters in European history.

• They also suffered from cholera epidemics, spread by diarrhea and infections with Borrelia and Rickettsia that were transmitted by the lice that plagued the poor due to crowded living conditions.

Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in the clothes they wore when they died.

Salvaging tubers left behind by pickers, gleaners are generally the poorest of the poor.Illustrated London News

Disease Changes the Course of History.

Resulted in the historic Irish Immigration to America.

Irish Potato FamineIrish Potato Famine

• 'Poor people could be seen crawling along the ditches looking for herbs, and their mouths were green from the leaves they were eating'. Wild plants might be gathered so intensively that little or nothing was left unpicked. For example, a contemporary newspaper reported that "There is no nettle, or a bit of water cress to be found near Dungarvan [County Waterford], as the starving strangers [wandering beggars] consumed them all"

• In Irish coastal areas, fishing was rarely possible during the harsh winters of the late 1840s and, in any case, many fisher folk had pawned their nets to buy provisions.

• Freshwater fish had become scarce - possibly due to over-fishing. Forcing the hungry to scavenge for grubs instead at the bottoms of streams.

• Nevertheless, much food could be gathered along the shoreline. Seabirds were hunted and their eggs collected along cliffs and occasionally on offshore rocks and islands around the coast until those too were gone.

• In December 1846, the inhabitants of Arranmore Island, off the coast of Donegal, were reported to be living on seaweed (algae).

Irish Moss PuddingIrish Moss Pudding

• Ingredients • 1/2 cup of dried Irish moss (or one cup fresh, washed Irish

moss)Three cups of milk1/3 cup of sugar1/8 tsp. of salt1 tsp. of vanilla

• If using dried Irish moss, soak it in water for fifteen minutes. Add the moss to three cups of milk in the top of a double boiler and cook over boiling water for twenty-five minutes. Strain the milk to remove the seaweed. Add sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir the mixture and pour it into individual molds. Chill and serve plain or with berries on top.

A primary source of income for the State of Maine.

Agar Comes from Red Algae

AgarAgarAgar forms thermally reversible gels at low temperatures.

Used as a laxative, or as an inert carrier for drug products where slow release of the drug is required).

Agar is used in bacteriology and mycology as a stiffening agent in growth media.

Agar is used as a stabilizer for emulsions, and as a constituent of cosmetic skin preparations, ointments, and lotions. It is used in photographic film, shoe polish, dental impression molds, shaving soaps, hand lotions, and in the tanning industry.

In food, agar is used as a substitute for gelatin, as an antidrying agent in breads and pastry, and also for gelling and thickening purposes. It is used in the manufacture of processed cheese, mayonnaise, puddings, creams, and jellies and in the manufacture of frozen dairy products.

CarrageenanCarrageenan is similar to agar, but requires higher concentrations to form gels.

Carrageenan is used for stabilizing chocolate, milk, egg nog, ice cream, sherbets, instant puddings, frostings, creamed soups, etc.

• Nori is a red algae that serves as a source of food.

• High vitamin and protein content.

• Common in Japan

DiatomsDiatoms

• Largest Group / Recent Group• Phylum Baciollariophya• Cool Marine Environments• Food Chains / Phytoplankton• Silica Shells or Frustules• Asexual and Sexual• Diatomaceous Earth• Centrate / Pennate

Largest Group of Algae

Fairly Recent Group: Very Important in Food Chains as Phytoplankton.

Diatomaceous Earth is a non-toxic, safe substance made up from crushed fossils of freshwater organisms and marine life. Crushed to a fine powder and observed through a microscope, the particles resemble bits of broken glass. Deadly to any insect and completely harmless to animals, fish, fowl or food.

• Diatomaceous Earth’s mode of action for insect and parasite control is strictly mechanical. The microscopically sharp edges contact the insect or parasite, and pierce their protective coating, so they soon dehydrate and die. The larvae is affected in the same way. This makes Diatomaceous Earth an excellent and totally natural control. It can be used as a dust for fleas, lice and other external pests by rubbing into the coat of the animal.

Diatoms are found in Cool Marine Oceans.

They are composed of beautiful Silica Shells that allow them to sparkle and shine upon viewing.

Pictured is a Pennate Freshwater Diatom

Centrate Diatoms are Usually Found in Marine Environments

Reproduction is Asexual for Several Generations and then Sexual for Genetic Variation.

Diatoms are often found with Desmids. Desmids are single-celled green algae which can only be found in fresh water

Brown AlgaeBrown Algae

• Related to Diatoms

• Rocky Coasts in Temperate Zones

• Cold Open Seas

• Multicellular Only

• Brown / Fucoxanthin

• Laminaria / Sargassum

• Alginic Acid / Iodine

• Phylum Phaeophyta

Young Group Closely Related to Diatoms

Found in Rocky Coasts in Temperate Zones or Open Cold Seas

Multicellular Algae

Attain Great Size – 180 Feet Growing 2 Foot/Day

Cell Walls are Cellulose and Algenic Acid

Kelp bed located near Monterey, California

Structure of Structure of KelpKelp

Kelp are the only Algae known to have internal tissue differentiation into conducting tissue.

Regardless of the type of picture provided, you should be able to label each of the following:

Blade

Holdfast

Air Bladder

Stipe.

Where is the Sargasso Sea?Where is the Sargasso Sea?

Early Science Wasn’t Always Early Science Wasn’t Always Accurate and it Evolved Very Accurate and it Evolved Very

Slowly If at AllSlowly If at All

The Medieval Miracles of Healing

“Medical science, trying to advance, was like a ship becalmed in the Sargasso Sea: both the atmosphere about it and the medium through which it must move resisted all progress. Instead of reliance upon observation, experience, experiment, and thought, attention was turned toward supernatural agencies.”

Columbus, as well as other seamen after him, also encountered a harrowing stretch of ocean now known as the Sargasso Sea. Ancient tales tell of sailboats stranded forever in a windless expanse of water, surrounded by seaweed and the remnants of other unfortunate vessels.

They may be small, but sea otters play a big ecological role in the North Pacific. Sea otters feed on urchins, which in turn consume kelp. Without otters, sea urchins destroy kelp forests that provide vital habitat for many marine organisms.

Laminaria

Laminaria is an herbal medicine used to induce labor and abortion. The dried stem of Laminaria mechanically dilates the cervical opening by absorbing water and swelling to several times its original diameter. Laminaria is a marine algae which provides a good source of protein, vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates. It only contains small amounts of fat.

Alginic Acid• An insoluble colloidal acid in the form of a

polysaccharide that is abundant in the cell walls of brown algae.

• Used in jam, jellies and marmalades and other similar fruit spreads including low-calorie products

• An ingredient in antacid preparations.

Alginic Acid

• Alginates are also used as a thickening paste for colors in printing textiles, as a hardener and thickener for joining threads in weaving; the alginates may subsequently be dissolved away, giving special effects to the material. Other uses include glazing and sizing paper, special printers' inks, paints, cosmetics, insecticides, and pharmaceutical preparations.

• In the USA alginates are frequently used as stabilizers in ice cream, giving a smooth texture and body, and also as a suspending agent in milk shakes.

DinoflagellatesDinoflagellates

• Warm Tropical Oceans• Unicellular / Green or Colorless / Biflagellate• Unusual Nucleus• Bioluminescent• Asexual Reproduction• Food Sources / Parasitic• Red Tide / Ciguatera • Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning

Important in Food Chains in Warm Tropical Oceans

Green (Green Shades) and Colorless Forms

Biflagellate

Chromosomes are Always Visible

Divers out for a night dive can sometimes see each other just by the ghostly glowing outline of the bioluminescent phytoplankton. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates have even made boats visible against the darkness!

As large as 2 mm or microscopic

Reproduction is typically asexual accomplished by splitting of the body and new individuals remain for some time attached to the first one as shown in the picture.

Photosynthetic Food Source

Forms Parasites on Fish and Some Protists

Like other phytoplankton, Dinoflagellates go through bloom cycles when they are highly abundant and these blooms can be toxic (commonly called red tides).  

ToxicityToxicity• Toxicity is due to the

secretion of a potent neurotoxin called saxitoxin (STX). During the advent of red tides, secretion of saxitoxin is especially dangerous.

• Shellfish filter feed on the contaminated water, and although mollusks themselves are apparently unaffected by saxitoxin, predators quickly develop the poison symptoms.

• High concentrations of saxitoxin can cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP), which is dangerous to both humans and marine animals.

• Because of their higher trophic level, these organisms are exposed to the most concentrated levels of STX.

• PSP symptoms in humans include dizziness, numbing of the lips and the neck, fatigue, difficulty breathing and ultimately possible respiratory paralysis.

• If artificial respiration is not performed, this paralysis can cause death.

Red TideRed Tide

Red Tide Off Coast of CaliforniaRed Tide Off Coast of California

What is our What is our first first

recorded recorded mention of mention of Red Tide?Red Tide?

"20 And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that [were] in

the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that [were] in the river were

turned to blood. 21 And the fish that [was] in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the

water of the river; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. 22 And the magicians of Egypt did so with their

enchantments: and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the LORD had said. 23 And Pharaoh turned and went into his house, neither did he set his heart to

this also. 24 And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river. 25 And seven days were fulfilled, after that the LORD

had smitten the river."

Exodus 7:20-25

• The first recorded case (Canada), occurred in 1793, during Captain George Vancouver's expedition to what is now British Columbia, when John Carter, a seaman, died from the effects of eating mussels, presumably infected with toxic algae. An eyewitness account of his death occurs in the June 17 diary entry of the expedition naturalist and surgeon, Archibald Menzies.

Diary of Archibald Menzies for June 17, 1793:

"Near the end of this arm they stopped to breakfast on the morning of the 15th where the people finding some good-looking mussels about the rocks and shores, boiled a quantity of them...but unfortunately for them...these mussels proved to be of deleterious quality as all those who had ate of them in any quantity were, soon after they embarked, seized with sickness, numbness about the mouth, face and arms, which soon spread over the whole body accompanied with giddiness and general lassitude; this was the case with three of the crew of Discovery's boat.... One of them, John Carter, puked a great deal, and found himself so much relieved by it that he kept pulling on his oar until about one o'clock when the whole party stopped to dine; but in attempting to get out of the boat, he was so weak and giddy that he fell down, and he and the other two were obliged to be carried to shore.

• On this, Mr. Johnstone instantly directed a fire to be kindled and plenty of warm water to be got ready as soon as possible, that each of them might drink a sufficient quantity of it to operate as an emetic...but, before it could be got ready, John Carter became very ill...his pulse becoming weaker and weaker, his mouth and lips appearing black and his face and neck becoming much swelled, together with faintness, general numbness and tremor. Under these circumstances, he gradually sank without much struggle and expired just as soon as they were offering him the first draught of warm water which he was unable to swallow, and this sad affair happened within five hours from the time of his eating the mussels."

Science Steps InScience Steps In

Saxitoxin is 1,000 times more toxic than the potent nerve gas sarin.

• Saxitoxin was used by the CIA in the 1950's as suicide pills for its agents.

• President Nixon ordered the painstakingly collected STX stock of the CIA to be destroyed in concordance with the United Nations Agreement on Biological Weapons. (Which was never done.)

• STX is the only natural toxin that, together with ricin, is on the Schedule Chemical Warfare Agents list.

• Saxitoxin has been reportedly used as a biological weapon by many countries against their enemies.

What is Saxitoxin's Mechanism of What is Saxitoxin's Mechanism of Action?Action?

• Saxitoxin is a potent neurotoxin that specifically and selectively binds the sodium channels in neural cells. Thus, it physically occludes the opening of the Na+ channel and prevents any sodium molecules from going in or out of the cell. Since neuronal transmittance of impulses and messages depends on the depolarization of the inside of the cell (a sudden and rapid influx of Na+ ions into the cell), action potentials are stopped, impairing a variety of bodily functions, including breathing.

• Don't drink the water. Don't swim in it, fish in it, or even bathe in it. Rodney Barker's book, And the Waters Turned to Blood details the latest plague to visit our shores: Pfiesteria piscicida, the "cell from hell," an aquatic microorganism that causes sufferers to exhibit symptoms similar to Alzheimers or multiple sclerosis. As it follows the fortunes of Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, one of the first scientists to recognize the danger of Pfiesteria, Barker's book reads like a cross between science fiction and conspiracy theory: Dr. Burkholder discovers that excessive pollution in the rivers and coastal waters of the Southeastern United States (Carolinas) causes a deadly microorganism to breed like crazy. There is no tidy ending to this story. Readers will be left with the disturbing knowledge that fish are still dying, fishermen are still getting sick, and the potential for disaster in this latest scourge is still unmeasured

GETncm/justsaycust-recrate-itemcommunittg/stores/dtg/stores/d-favorite-listruejust-say-no

Pfiesteria piscicida

It seems extreme to name a dinoflagellate species piscicida, or fish killer, but P. piscicida produces a toxin that does in fact kill fish.

This organism is heterotrophic and, once the toxin has attacked the surface of the fish, it feeds on the disaggregated and decomposing fish carcass.

• This species has been implicated in a large fraction of sudden fish kills in North Carolina estuarine waters in recent years, particularly in Pamlico Sound, which is the second largest estuary on the east coast of the United States.

• Toxic algal blooms are on the rise throughout the world in recent years

Green AlgaeGreen Algae

• Second Largest Group• Most Diverse• Very Old• Freshwater / Moist Soil• Sea Lettuce• Single Cells / Filaments / Colonies / Thalli• Source of Oxygen / Food Chain• Volvox, Spirogyra• Freshwater / Volvox, Spirogyra• Marine / Sea Lettuce

Second Largest Group of Algae.

Most Diverse of all Algae

Found in Freshwater and on Land

Almost as Old as Red Algae

Variety of Forms Including Single Cells, Filaments, Colonies, and Leaf-like Thalli

Can Store Starch Much in the Same Way as Plants and also may have Cellulose in Cell Walls

Scientists Conclude that Higher Terrestrial Plants Arose from a Green Algal Ancestor.

Sea Lettuce is a Marine Species that Lives in Salt Water along the Coast. It forms in Sheets and Often Obscures the Bottom.

Spirogyra (Freshwater Species)

Conjugation Tubes are a Means of Sexual Reproduction.

• Algae are simple plant organisms found in all wet environments.

• They range in size from microscopic forms to the simple macroscopic forms of  'pondweeds', and the large seaweeds.

• All are interesting to study but microbiologists generally agree that one of the most beautiful to behold is Volvox.

Volvox

Daughter Cells Visible Inside Volvox

• These are spherical colonies of green cells clinging to a semi-transparent hollow ball of mucilage. A single colony may consist of over 500 cells, each one with a tiny pair of whip-like tails (flagella) - and all cells undulating their flagella in unison,  propelling the colony through the water. 

A single Volvox colony spins through the dark waters of a pond. Daughter cells are just visible inside.

Other AlgaeOther Algae

Anabaena with Heterocyst

Phylum Cyanobacteria

Sordaria

Perithecium

Sordaria Ascus with Ascospores

Algae Can Be Beneficial

But It Can Also Be Hazardous!