Cell wall and cell growth characteristics of giant‐celled algae

Abstract

Because of their large sizes and simple shapes, giant-celled algae have been used to study how the structural and mechanical properties of cell walls influence cell growth. Here we review known relationships between cell wall and cell growth properties that are characteristic of three representative taxa of giant-celled algae, namely, Valonia ventricosa, internodal cells of characean algae, and Vaucheria frigida. Tip-growing cells of the genus Vaucheria differ from cells undergoing diffuse growth in V. ventricosa and characean algae in terms of their basic architectures (non-lamellate vs. multilamellate) and their dependence upon pH and Ca 2+ for cell wall extensibility. To further understand the mechanisms controlling cell growth by cell walls, comparative analyses of cell wall structures and/or associated growth modes will be useful. The giant-celled algae potentially serve as good models for such investigations because of their wide variety of developmental processes and cell shapes exhibited.

The inflated mitochondrial genomes of siphonous green algae reflect processes driving expansion of noncoding DNA and proliferation of introns

“…The class Ulvophyceae within the Chlorophyta show high morphological diversity, including a range of cell configurations (Cocquyt et al, 2010;Fang et al, 2017), and are thus a useful model for examining the evolution of genome features under differing evolutionary constraints. The order Bryopsidales are a lineage of siphonous seaweeds with thali comprised of a single giant tubular cell containing cytoplasm with a large number of nuclei and other organelles free to move around the entire plant (Vroom & Smith, 2001Verbruggen et al, 2009;Mine, Sekida & Okuda, 2015). Within the Bryopsidales, the size and gene arrangement of chloroplast genomes has been found to vary considerably while gene content was much less variable (Cremen et al, 2018).…”

pH-Dependent Maintenance of Cell Wall Integrity in the Giant-Celled Green Alga <i>Valonia utricularis</i>

“…2b), indicating that the binding between cell wall layers was loosened by the separation treatment instead of destroying the constituents of each layer. Cell walls composed of many layers with distinct CMF directions have been reported in various taxa of land plants (Probine 1963, Vian et al 1993) and macroscopic algae (Mine et al 2015). The CMF arrangement in the cell wall layers is classified as a multinet arrangement in the characean algae and land plants, whereas it is a crossed-fibril type in Valonia and certain giant-celled green algae (Mine et al 2015).…”

“…Cell walls composed of many layers with distinct CMF directions have been reported in various taxa of land plants (Probine 1963, Vian et al 1993) and macroscopic algae (Mine et al 2015). The CMF arrangement in the cell wall layers is classified as a multinet arrangement in the characean algae and land plants, whereas it is a crossed-fibril type in Valonia and certain giant-celled green algae (Mine et al 2015). In crossed-fibril cell walls, the CMFs in individual layers are oriented in a uniform direction and the relative angle of CMF between neighboring layers is approximately 100 .…”

Peer Review #1 of "The inflated mitochondrial genomes of siphonous green algae reflect processes driving expansion of noncoding DNA and proliferation of introns (v0.1)"

“…Manuscript to be reviewed order Bryopsidales are a lineage of siphonous seaweeds with thali comprised of a single giant tubular cell containing cytoplasm with a large number of nuclei and other organelles free to move around the entire plant (Vroom & Smith, 2001;Vroom & Smith, 2003;Verbruggen et al, 2009;Mine et al, 2015). Within the Bryopsidales, the size and gene arrangement of chloroplast genomes has been found to vary considerably while gene content was much less variable (Cremen et al, 2018).…”