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Nuclear structure -- in DIC!

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


While I work on another post, here's a nucleus of an amoeba to look at. Some amoebae tend to have large and fairly obvious nuclei, and, if the cell is thin enough, you can make out some nuclear ultrastructure! This specimen is flattened, so what we have here is not a completely natural representation of the nucleus, and we only have a view from one side -- some nuclei have elaborate internal structures that aren't symmetrical.

Around the edge is the nuclear envelope and, potentially, a periphery of fibres called lamina. The internal blob is presumably heterochromatin and potentially nucleolar in nature -- but one can't tell without using electron microscopy as we run into the light resolution barrier here. A true nucleolus (and there can be several, contrary to what some textbooks suggest!) should be full of ribosomal material under construction. Thus, the term 'endosome' (inner body) is often used to avoid jumping to conclusions about the nature of those bodies. (a neat page on amoebae and their nuclei (among other things, like ID) can be found here: amoeba.ifmo.ru). Lastly, note the small granules just beneath the periphery of the nucleus. I have no idea what they are, and would probably have to go to electron microscopy to really have a clue, but they look sorta cool anyway. While the nucleus is sometimes treated as just a bag of DNA or "genome", that DNA is in a highly organised arrangement with various regions of it existing in different states, bound to different proteins... even turned 'on' and 'off', depending on conditions or what the cell is doing.

Here, we get just a passing glimpse of that complexity... but still, I think it may serve as a nice intuitive reminder.


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Here's the view from which it came. Note the border between the clear ectoplasm at the edge of the cell, and the endoplasm where all the 'stuff' is. This cell is a bit squished, so you don't get to see why it has an ectoplasm just yet...

The cytoplasm is full of refractile crystals, at least some of which may be related to urea in composition, and perhaps used to accumulate (and later dispose of) waste products. They may also be and do other things, of course.

And a general view of the amoeba. This looks like Polychaos sp., an amoebozoan amoeba with multiple pseudopods poking out in different directions (pseudopod motility is an important character for amoeba ID). Upon extending the pseudopod by laying down the ectoplasm we mentioned before, the 'pod is soon filled with endoplasm, streaming rapidly through its centre. This is no slow amoeba. However, the nucleus is strange for a Polychaos sp., so it may well be something else, or a poorly documented Polychaos. One would probably have to resort to sequence data to figure it out, or a Russian amoeba expert (there's a bit of a team there, and they're really good).

About Psi Wavefunction

I first encountered the wonders of the protist realm back in childhood, when a murky droplet of pond scum was revealed by the microscope to entail an alien world in its own right. It took another decade to discover there was a field and a community dedicated to these organisms, and I bade farewell to the study of more familiar big things. As a kid I was also fascinated by tales of exploration of the New World, as well as those of fantasy worlds. I was then sad that the age of surveying new landmasses on earth was over, and that human extraterrestrial adventures are unlikely to happen within our lifetimes. It seemed everything was discovered already. But that could hardly be further from the truth -- all that is necessary to begin one's own Age of Exploration is a new approach or perspective, and a healthy does of imagination. Since reality has conjured far more than the human mind alone ever could, science yields a way to write stories much wilder than fiction. All one needs to access the alien world of microbes around (and inside) them is a shift of scale by simple glass sphere.
I'm currently finishing up my undergraduate degree in Vancouver and in transition career-wise, hopefully to end up in graduate school soon. I was born in Russia (and speak the language) and spent most of my life in US and Canada. In addition to protists, I'm fascinated by evolution, including that of culture and languages, diversity and biology of cells and how they self-organise, linguistics and anthropology, particularly of the less talked-about cultures, sociology of science and plenty of totally random things that snag my attention.
Banner image was kindly post-processed and enhanced by my friend: an accomplished comic artist who goes by Achiru.

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