Microbe of the Week: Nematodinium
Hey, fellow travelers, it's Monday- and that means it's time for our first ever Marine Microbe of the Week!
This charming character is named Nematodinium, and it is a dinoflagellate (from the Greek dinos for "whirling" and the Latin flagellum, or "whip"). Dinoflagellates are protists, which means that, like plants and animals, their cells have a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles. Dinoflagellates are found in the fossil record as early as the mid-Triassic, and geochemical markers suggest they have been around since the early Cambrian period- in other words, they are at least as old as dinosaurs, and possibly even older.
A professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Oscar Schofield, likes to call dinoflagellates "the X-men of the sea," because of their huge, complex genomes (which can be over 60 times longer than the human genome!) and almost mutant-like traits. Nematodinium could certainly be a comic book hero- or villian. Not only is it armed with the microscopic equivalent of a harpoon arsenal (nematocysts), which is uses both for hunting and defense, but it also has a dark eyespot or ocelloid, visible in the picture on the left. The lens of this "eye" focuses a projected image onto a retinoid lining membrane, in the same manner as the eyes of animals. You heard right: one cell, no brain, but a functioning eye. I like to think of Nematodinium as a microscopic sea raptor, but you can go with the vicious sharp-eyed predator of your choice.
Nematodinium is only one of several dinoflagellates that possess a working eye. Think about that the next time you go swimming at the beach.