Mycotoxins and Other Toxins from Unicellular Organisms

2013 ◽  
pp. 283-302
Keyword(s):  
Unicellular Organisms

Freezing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Hysteresis ◽  
Higher Plants ◽  
Terrestrial Environment ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
Cellular Dehydration ◽  
A Cell ◽  
Unicellular Organisms ◽  
Cell Cytosol ◽  
Freezing Temperatures ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

Freezing is a widespread ecological challenge, affecting organisms in over half the terrestrial environment as well as both polar seas. With very few exceptions, if a cell freezes internally, it dies. Polar teleost fish in shallow waters avoid freezing by synthesising a range of protein or glycoprotein antifreezes. Terrestrial organisms are faced with a far greater thermal challenge, and exhibit a more complex array of responses. Unicellular organisms survive freezing temperatures by preventing ice nucleating within the cytosol, and tolerating the cellular dehydration and membrane disruption that follows from ice forming in the external environment. Multicellular organisms survive freezing temperatures by manipulating the composition of the extracellular body fluids. Terrestrial organisms may freeze at high subzero temperatures, often promoted by ice nucleating proteins, and small molecular mass cryoprotectants (often sugars and polyols) moderate the osmotic stress on cells. A range of chaperone proteins (dehydrins, LEA proteins) help maintain the integrity of membranes and macromolecules. Thermal hysteresis (antifreeze) proteins prevent damaging recrystallisation of ice. In some cases arthropods and higher plants prevent freezing in their extracellular fluids and survive by supercooling. Vitrification of extracellular water, or of the cell cytosol, may be a more widespread response to very cold temperatures than recognised to date.

scholarly journals Cell migration guided by long-lived spatial memory

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph d’Alessandro ◽  
Alex Barbier--Chebbah ◽  
Victor Cellerin ◽  
Olivier Benichou ◽  
René Marc Mège ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cell Migration ◽  
Spatial Memory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Single Cells ◽  
Environmental Perturbations ◽  
Motile Cells ◽  
Unicellular Organisms ◽  
Biochemical Signals ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cell Trajectories

AbstractLiving cells actively migrate in their environment to perform key biological functions—from unicellular organisms looking for food to single cells such as fibroblasts, leukocytes or cancer cells that can shape, patrol or invade tissues. Cell migration results from complex intracellular processes that enable cell self-propulsion, and has been shown to also integrate various chemical or physical extracellular signals. While it is established that cells can modify their environment by depositing biochemical signals or mechanically remodelling the extracellular matrix, the impact of such self-induced environmental perturbations on cell trajectories at various scales remains unexplored. Here, we show that cells can retrieve their path: by confining motile cells on 1D and 2D micropatterned surfaces, we demonstrate that they leave long-lived physicochemical footprints along their way, which determine their future path. On this basis, we argue that cell trajectories belong to the general class of self-interacting random walks, and show that self-interactions can rule large scale exploration by inducing long-lived ageing, subdiffusion and anomalous first-passage statistics. Altogether, our joint experimental and theoretical approach points to a generic coupling between motile cells and their environment, which endows cells with a spatial memory of their path and can dramatically change their space exploration.

scholarly journals Amoebic Foraging Model of Metastatic Cancer Cells

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1140
Author(s):  
Daiki Andoh ◽  
Yukio-Pegio Gunji
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Inference ◽  
Cancer Cells ◽  
Metastatic Cancer ◽  
Gait Patterns ◽  
Lévy Walk ◽  
Levy Walk ◽  
Unicellular Organisms ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Walk Algorithm ◽  
Metastatic Cancer Cells

The Lévy walk is a pattern that is often seen in the movement of living organisms; it has both ballistic and random features and is a behavior that has been recognized in various animals and unicellular organisms, such as amoebae, in recent years. We proposed an amoeba locomotion model that implements Bayesian and inverse Bayesian inference as a Lévy walk algorithm that balances exploration and exploitation, and through a comparison with general random walks, we confirmed its effectiveness. While Bayesian inference is expressed only by P(h) = P(h|d), we introduce inverse Bayesian inference expressed as P(d|h) = P(d) in a symmetry fashion. That symmetry contributes to balancing contracting and expanding the probability space. Additionally, the conditions of various environments were set, and experimental results were obtained that corresponded to changes in gait patterns with respect to changes in the conditions of actual metastatic cancer cells.

scholarly journals SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT OF EXTINCTION OR ADAPTATION OF BIOLOGICAL SPECIES AFTER TEMPERATURE CHANGES

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 389-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. STAUFFER ◽  
H. ARNDT
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Reproduction ◽  
Temperature Change ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Biological Aging ◽  
Heterotrophic Flagellates ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
Penna Model ◽  
Simulation And Experiment ◽  
Unicellular Organisms

Can unicellular organisms survive a drastic temperature change, and adapt to it after many generations? In simulations of the Penna model of biological aging, both extinction and adaptation were found for asexual and sexual reproduction as well as for parasex. These model investigations are the basis for the design of evolution experiments with heterotrophic flagellates.

scholarly journals Evolution and Cell Physiology. 1. Cell signaling is all of biology

2013 ◽  
Vol 305 (7) ◽  
pp. C682-C689 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Torday
Keyword(s):  
Adrenergic Receptor ◽  
Receptor Gene ◽  
Pressure Control ◽  
Cell Physiology ◽  
Gene Duplications ◽  
Radical Oxygen Species ◽  
Dna Mutations ◽  
Parathyroid Hormone Related Protein ◽  
Unicellular Organisms ◽  
Pthrp Receptor

I hypothesize that the First Principles of Physiology (FPPs) were co-opted during the vertebrate transition from water to land, beginning with the acquisition of cholesterol by eukaryotes, facilitating unicellular evolution over the course of the first 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history, in service to the reduction in intracellular entropy, far from equilibrium. That mechanism was perpetuated by the advent of cholesterol in the cell membrane of unicellular eukaryotes, ultimately giving rise to the metazoan homologs of the gut, lung, kidney, skin, bone, and brain. Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP), whose cognate receptor underwent a gene duplication during the transition from fish to amphibians, facilitated gas exchange for the water-to-land transition, since PTHrP is necessary for the formation of lung alveoli: deletion of the PTHrP gene in mice causes the offspring to die within a few minutes of birth due to the absence of alveoli. Moreover, PTHrP is central to the development and homeostasis of the kidney, skin, gut, bone, and brain. Therefore, duplication of the PTHrP receptor gene is predicted to have facilitated the molecular evolution of all the necessary traits for land habitation through a common cellular and molecular motif. Subsequent duplication of the β-adrenergic receptor gene permitted blood pressure control within the lung microvasculature, allowing further evolution of the lung by increasing its surface area. I propose that such gene duplications were the result of shear stress on the microvasculature, locally generating radical oxygen species that caused DNA mutations, giving rise to duplication of the PTHrP and β-adrenergic receptor genes. I propose that one can determine the FPPs by systematically tracing the molecular homologies between the lung, skin, kidney, gut, bone, and brain across development, phylogeny, and pathophysiology as a type of “reverse evolution.” By tracing such relationships back to unicellular organisms, one can use the underlying principles to predict homeostatic failure as disease, thereby also potentially forming the basis for maneuvers that can treat or even prevent such failure.

scholarly journals Physical principles of membrane organization

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Israelachvili ◽  
S. Marčelja ◽  
R. G. Horn
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Nerve Conduction ◽  
Energy Transduction ◽  
Molecular Organization ◽  
Cellular Structures ◽  
Cellular Activity ◽  
Simple Chemical ◽  
Unicellular Organisms ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Physical Principles

Membranes are the most common cellular structures in both plants and animals. They are now recognized as being involved in almost all aspects of cellular activity ranging from motility and food entrapment in simple unicellular organisms, to energy transduction, immunorecognition, nerve conduction and biosynthesis in plants and higher organisms. This functional diversity is reflected in the wide variety of lipids and particularly of proteins that compose different membranes. An understanding of the physical principles that govern the molecular organization of membranes is essential for an understanding of their physiological roles since structure and function are much more interdependent in membranes than in, say, simple chemical reactions in solution. We must recognize, however, that the word ‘understanding’ means different things in different disciplines, and nowhere is this more apparent than in this multidisciplinary area where biology, chemistry and physics meet.

Guanylyl cyclases in unicellular organisms

2002 ◽  
pp. 149-158
Author(s):  
Jürgen U. Linder ◽  
Joachim E. Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Guanylyl Cyclases ◽  
Unicellular Organisms
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