The large Cyanobacterial filament is from a Heron's Head Park salt marsh pond in San Francisco Bay. Magnification is at 1,000x under Hoffman Modulation Contrast optics; videomicrography with a Nikon 885 Coolpix at 3x zoom. The tiny rod-shaped bacteria swarming around the Cyanobacterial filament are unidentified.
Nice video! A question: that huge filament is just one cell or many cells? How are they organized?
Ellaeis 4 years ago
The filament is made of many cells, each "coin" shaped. Each transverse ridge marks the edge of a cell. Since these are bacteria, the DNA is "naked" rather than being in chromosomes. The chlorophyll is not organized in chloroplasts, but as loose "plates" like the inside of chloroplasts. These guys have been moving like this for 3.5-billion years. They created our oxygen atmosphere we breathe today.
WLanier 3 years ago