Taxonomic tidbit: parabasalids and strippers

Sometimes the taxonomist's character lies concealed in the etymology of a new taxon name:

"The arrangement of the long cilia, clothing the body, reminded him of the nymphs in a recent spectacular drama, in which they appeared with their nakedness barely concealed by long cords suspended from the shoulders, and this arrangement has suggested the name applied to the parasite." Leidy 1877 Proc Acad Nat Sci Philadelphia (h/t PJK)

So yes, Trichonympha (third from left in the blog header), reminded some proper Victorian scientist of his latest stripper experience. And this is why it sometimes pays to read the original taxonomic descriptions.

Also, apparently it wasn't too weird for the author to refer to himself in third person back then...

The thoughts of Aurigamonas

While literature surfing again, came across this adorable little cercozoan:

Aurigamonas solis. Diminutive amoeboflagellate, ambitious apetite. Seems to be a common theme in the protist world... (Vickerman et al. 2005 Protist)

That diagram was desperately asking for something to be done. It had to be. And so I did it:

True story: the phagocytic vacuole together with the nucleus express the cell's emotions. But seriously, why would it attack something so big and so armoured!? (Hope the authors wouldn't mind too much someone mutilating their drawings like that...)

On a more serious note, Aurigamonas seem very interesting in terms of cell structure:

The cell is biflagellated with multitudes of haptopodia sticking out and capped by haptosomes. The diagram shows them in varying stages of development (1-5). pno - paranuclear organelle (looks interesting!), cv - contractile vacuoles, sv - spicule-containing vacuoles, mt - microtubule rootlet system (reduced), m - mitochondrion, tv - thick-membraned vesicle. (Vickerman et al. 2005 Protist)

Don't you just wanna dangle this one by its 'tail'?

Phylomon, Protémon and "5 favourite organisms" meme

David Ng writes about the sad state of biodiversity/biology/nature education of kids when they obsess over fantasy instead, being unsatiated by what they know of the real world; this manifests itself in the form of Pokémon, etc. As a counter"attack", he suggests making Pokémon-esque Phylomon cards, perhaps eventually ending up with game-like rules and a way to reach out and educate children about the awesome diversity that exists far beyond the meagre attempts of human imagination. (ok, the hyperbolic assertions are my take). I think that would be awesome, especially if we could focus more on the world we cannot see so easily -- namely the microbes, aliens from a different scale.

A while ago my friend and I were discussing something similar, and 'Protémon' popped into my head. Yes, we could make a card collection/battle game starring various protists as characters. After all, since evolution has been around way longer than H.sapiens, its 'imaginative power' has expanded far beyond our own in that time. Of course 'intelligent design' via still-limited forsight can give an edge in creativity over non-human (ie non-cultural/linguistic) evolution, the damn thing's got about 3.0-3.5 billion years on us; there's still no way we could ever win!

Meanwhile, I randomly threw together this doodle in about 20min: fantasy anime videogame meet protistology. I swear no exogenous hallucinogenic chemicals were involved in this piece; the endogenous ones suffice, apparently...

Actually, in this particular screencap our protagonist is apparently ignoring the minor crap and charging straight at the boss: Cavalier-Smith 2006 Biol Direct (to the left of the drawing...)

I have class in 8h... Wish I had the speed-enhancing Stylonychia(-ish) protémon in real life to help me get to that class. Or a flying alarm clock shaped like Troglocorys. Damn I wish I were only ~100μm tall. On a second thought, maybe not...

And David Ng wants us to form a meme around his post:

"think of your five favourite organisms and why, suggest it for the Phylomon art community and pass it on?"

So consider yourselves tagged!

Ok, I'll do this one: (note, subject to change; I don't really have favourites, except for the first one)
1. Erythropsidinium (and other Warnowiid dinoflagellates) -- Unicellular dinoflagellate with a fucking IMAGE-FORMING CAMERA EYE. Need I say more?

2. Oxytricha (ciliate) -- Complicated bi-nucleate genome system, scrambled genes, complex morphogenesis, 'walks' and also really cute!

3. Saccinobaculus (oxymonad) -- It moves by thrashing around it's internal bundle of microtubules (axostyle), inside itself. Snake-in-a-bag. See clip in this post

4a. Myxomycetes -- plasmodial slime moulds. Although to be honest, they can easily compete with Dicty[ostelium; a cellular slime mould], but something about a large multinucleate-yet-unicellular thing of bright goop is just awesome, despite having seen plenty of

4b. Phaeodarians -- (couldn't pick between these two) Go to Coelodiceras. Now, imagine the living organism -- a giant spikey ball of axopodia, sucking in and devouring anything they can touch, including small metazoans (eg. copepods). Oh, did I mention this thing is unicellular, and uninucleate? And big?

5. Arabidopsis -- It feeds me and pays my bills. Also, I'm still a cell/developmental biologist, I swear!

Now what are yours?

The joys of old literature...

Call me immature, but I succumbed to a 5min laughing fit upon seeing this while digging through 17-18th century articles in JSTOR*:

(van Leeuwenhoek 1711 Phil. Transac. 27:316-320)

Also, I can't help but mentally read this stuff with a lisp, thanks to the f-shaped s's...
But "they call it a fsucking ram, because it had fsuck'd it's Dam a little before it was killed" is just insane...

*That is what normal people do at 12.30am for fun, right?

A new low: anime "Erythrops"

Oh my FSM, what have I created?

Erythrops the [cyclopsoid] Erythropsidinium. Now I gotta dig up that Greuet 1977 paper again to see if this looks a bit less awkward in mitosis... I mean, uhhh, focus on my classes and study my biochem notes. Yeah. That.

Hey, when they realise their mistake and kick me out of academia, I can totally become a protist comic artist! Now that's a job in high demand out in the real world...

As for Sunday Protist, I'm waiting for a certain someone to reappear online and remedy his guess. We're a bit low on Dalhousie traffic lately... I'm looking at you, Ancyromonas geek!

Anyway, class in 7.5h... totally gonna attend it! Nothing! can be more fun and exciting! than 8am! biochem! Wheeee! Yay!

100th post!

100^th post, yay! Time for something silly, to celebrate:

Let's meet our new mascots, Cer Ratium (pun avoidance order in effect) and [insert witty name here] the Protoperidinium:

(ARGH my shitty computer just can't handle the elite memory whore that is ImageJ...)

Cer Ratium has a special attack: for the anime geeks among us, remember Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist? Yeah... this thing is gonna grow unrealistically long finger[nail] things to pierce opponents with...

And Protoperidinium ("Protoper"?) has this epic pallium attack where it casts a pseudopodious veil upon its opponents and digests them. Size advantages are useless against this one!

And now some of the other cast members: (mostly borne of lecture note margin doodles...)

Left -> right: T-phage riding E.coli, Psi, perpetually hammered EtOH, Partial [derivative], hNu, perpetually abused Neuron, a couple dimensions (R³ with the Projection Lance, mwahaha), Caffeine, cute lil' Kinesin and Dynein chillin on a 'tube (microtubule)... Dynein is holding up a clathrin-coated vesicle.

("Эх, прокачу!" is a reference to a Russian novel, Золотой Телёнок...)

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