Comments on: Pac-mecium: A Convenient, Fun, and Educational New Way to Bend Protists to Your Will

By: Katie

Katie — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:31:02 +0000

Just wanted to say that this blog is very informative, and is actually fun and interesting to read through. I needed to look up some info for a project and ended up reading more than just this post! Thanks for making things interesting, this blog is very well written :)

By: Hot Rhodopsin

Hot Rhodopsin — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:41:24 +0000

[…] (from the roots for “whirling whip”) are also alveolates like ciliates (including the paramecia I wrote about here) and apicomplexans (which include Plasmodium, the protist that causes malaria). That means they […]

By: Jess Gribble

Jess Gribble — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Jen, this post is funny, beautifully written, and totally fascinating. All those cool words from high school biology are trickling back into my consciousness! Your blog is a must-read.

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:55:42 +0000

That’s a bit twisted I think. “Don’t play with your food”

This is further along the road to skynet: http://www.robotliving.com/robot-art/robotic-fly-powered-clock/

By: CelticRose

CelticRose — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:08:10 +0000

Those games are horrible! It doesn’t matter if they’re single-celled — you do NOT torment animals for your own amusement!

By: Jennifer Frazer

Jennifer Frazer — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:32:59 +0000

The Russian dolls scenario can and definitely has happened. Botanists have found chloroplasts with nested membranes that indicate there were two or three or perhaps even more sequential separate endysymbiotic events, aka, getting eaten but not digested and going on to be a symbiont of a symbiont of a symbiont. . . . sometimes even vestigial nuclei are squashed between the membranes, but little else. And you are right — green algae are the group from which plants evolved. So the chloroplasts *within* the green alga are, in fact, cyanobacterially derived. I’m going to amend the post to reflect that fact — I hadn’t even thought of it myself. : )

By: Ray Fisher

Ray Fisher — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:27:24 +0000

Hey Jennifer,

First let me say I only recently started following your blog, and really enjoy it. Excellent work.

I had a question about Zoochlorella chloroplasts. I knew algae acquired chloroplasts differently than plants (instead of engulfing cyanobacteria like plants, they engulfed other photosynthetic eukaryotes), but have never learned how the engulfed eurkaryote’s chloroplasts were acquired. I guess I’m asking if algal chloroplasts are still cyanobacteria-derived, just acquired by eating something that already ate the cyanobacteria? Hmm… reminds me of Russian nesting dolls.