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Euglena gracilis is a freshwater species of single-celled alga in the genus Euglena. It has secondary chloroplasts, and is a mixotroph able to feed by photosynthesis or phagocytosis. It has a highly flexible cell surface, allowing it to change shape from a thin cell up to 100 μm long to a sphere of approximately 20 μm.
The species Euglena gracilis has been used extensively in the laboratory as a model organism. [4] Most species of Euglena have photosynthesizing chloroplasts within the body of the cell, which enable them to feed by autotrophy, like plants. However, they can also take nourishment heterotrophically, like animals.
Euglenophyceae are mainly present in the water column of freshwater habitats. They are abundant in small eutrophic water bodies of temperate climates, where they are capable of forming blooms, including toxic blooms such as those caused by Euglena sanguinea.
This scheme endured until 1986, with the sequencing of the SSU rRNA gene from Euglena gracilis. [8] Euglenids are currently regarded as a highly diverse clade within Euglenozoa, in the eukaryotic supergroup Discoba. [9]
Euglenaceae show the most morphological diversity within the class Euglenophyceae. [3] They are mostly single-celled organisms, except for the genus Colacium.They are free-living or sometimes inhabiting the digestive tracts of animals. [1]
Euglenozoa are a large group of flagellate Discoba.They include a variety of common free-living species, as well as a few important parasites, some of which infect humans. Euglenozoa are represented by four major groups, i.e., Kinetoplastea, Diplonemea, Euglenida, and Symbiontid
Schematic representation of a Euglena cell with red eyespot (9) Schematic representation of a Chlamydomonas cell with chloroplast eyespot (4). The eyespot apparatus (or stigma) is a photoreceptive organelle found in the flagellate or (motile) cells of green algae and other unicellular photosynthetic organisms such as euglenids.
It was found that the toxin that caused the high mortality rates is non-protein, stable when heated to 30 °C for 10 minutes and maintained activity when frozen at -80 °C for 60 days. Cells from the Euglena were isolated and light microscopic analysis verified the species identity as Euglena Sanguinea and identified the toxin as euglenophycin. [5]