All diatoms articles
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NewsTiny diatoms, big climate impact: How microscopic skeletons rapidly shape ocean chemistry
Researchers have found that diatoms’ intricate, silica-based skeletons transform into clay minerals in as little as 40 days. Until the 1990s, scientists believed that this enigmatic process took hundreds to thousands of years.
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NewsExtreme diatoms inside the Arctic ice glide into the record books
Diatoms found in polar ice are active until temperatures drop to -15 C - the lowest ever recorded for movement by a eukaryotic cell.
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NewsTiny ocean partnership between algae and bacteria reveals secrets of evolution
The microscopic alliance between algae and bacteria offers rare, step-by-step snapshots of how bacteria lose genes and adapt to increasing host dependence, a new study shows.
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NewsStudy reveals the microbial battlegrounds within estuaries - and the part played by microplastics
Estuaries are known hotspots for biodiversity and are turbulent mixing zones where freshwater and seawater microbes confront one another. Source: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of the Baltic Sea ...
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NewsNew study illuminates how diatoms thrive in — and light up — the Southern Ocean
An area of the remote Southern Ocean that’s long confused ocean color satellites by reflecting large amounts of turquoise-colored light appears to be full of silica-rich diatoms, according to a new study. There is also evidence in these polar waters of coccolithophores.
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NewsDiatoms could be key to creating farming systems on the Moon
Diatoms hold immense potential to revolutionize space agriculture, offering a transformative solution for sustainable extraterrestrial ecosystems and a key role in enabling humanity to establish sustainable living environments on the Moon and other planets, a new study argues.
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NewsStudy resolves diatom tree of life - and could offer clues to Earth’s puzzle
A new study finds that diatoms evolved slowly for the first 100 million years of their existence. Then, 170 million years ago, they reached an inflection point characterized by a burst of rapid speciation orders of magnitude faster than anything that had preceded it.
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NewsA borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet
A group of diatom species belonging to the Nitzschia genus gave up on photosynthesis and now get their carbon straight from their environment, thanks to a bacterial gene picked up by an ancestor, a new study shows.
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NewsPhytochromes: The ‘eyes’ that enable microalgae to find their way in the depths
By studying the light perception process of diatoms, a group of phytoplankton, scientists have discovered that these microalgae use light variation sensors which are codified in their genomes: phytochromes.
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NewsResearcher to study role of tiny diatoms in protecting endangered marine animals
A new study is aimed at understanding the essential role played by diatoms, tiny microalgae that can live in oceans or in symbiosis with endangered marine animal hosts and play a fundamental role in maintaining Earth’s delicate ecosystem.
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NewsStudy reveals environmental impact of artificial sweeteners on water microbes
A new study demonstrates how sucralose affects the behavior of cyanobacteria — an aquatic photosynthetic bacteria — and diatoms, microscopic algae that account for more than 30% of the primary food production in the marine food chain.
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NewsScientists unravel drivers of the global zinc cycle in our oceans
The important role of the Southern Ocean in global biological processes and the carbon cycle has been confirmed by a study that, for the first time based on field evidence, reveals the underappreciated role of inorganic zinc particles in these cycles.
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NewsNew Rhizobia-diatom symbiosis discovery solves long-standing marine mystery
Scientists solve a longstanding marine mystery by uncovering a partnership between a diatom and a bacterium that can account for a large share of nitrogen fixation in vast regions of the ocean, with exciting implications also for agriculture.
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NewsResearchers investigate how freshwater diatoms stay in the light
Scientists sampled the ice-covered (in 2019) and ice-free (in 2020) winter waters of Lake Erie to learn how diatoms are responding to changing environmental conditions.
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NewsResearchers explore role of salps as predators of marine microbes
Salps play a major role in controlling the abundances and function of microbial communities in the vast nutrient-poor open ocean, with global implications, a new study reveals.
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NewsScientists uncover new pathway of diatom-mediated calcification
Researchers have found that the photosynthesis of a common diatom can induce substantial aragonite precipitation from artificial/natural seawater under significantly lower supersaturation levels required for the precipitation of inorganic CaCO3.
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NewsStudy unveils gene expression of photosynthetic symbiont in marine diatom
A new study explores the genetic expression of a photosynthetic symbiont that lives inside an abundant marine organism.