Inter-turn intervals in Paramecium caudatum display an exponential distribution.

Autor: Deeti S; School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia., Man W; School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia., Le Roux JJ; School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia., Cheng K; School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Communicative & integrative biology [Commun Integr Biol] 2024 May 31; Vol. 17 (1), pp. 2360961. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 May 31 (Print Publication: 2024).
DOI: 10.1080/19420889.2024.2360961
Abstrakt: In navigating to a better location, mobile organisms in diverse taxa change directions of travel occasionally, including bacteria, archaea, single-celled eukaryotes, and small nematode worms such as Caenorhabditis elegans . In perhaps the most common form of goal-orientated movement, the rate of such turns is adjusted in all these taxa to ascend (or descend) a chemical gradient. Basically, the rate of turns is reduced when the movement results in better conditions. In the bacterium Escherichia coli and in C. elegans , the turns are generated by random-rate processes, in which the probability of a turn occurring is constant at every moment. This is evidenced by a distribution of inter-turn intervals that has an exponential distribution. For the first time, we examined the distribution of inter-turn intervals in the single-celled eukaryote, Paramecium caudatum , in a class exercise for first-year university students. We found clear evidence for an exponential distribution of inter-turn intervals, implying a random-rate process in generating turns in Paramecium . The exercise also shows that university laboratory classes can be used to generate scientific data to address research questions whose answers are as yet unknown.
Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
(© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
Externí odkaz:
Nepřihlášeným uživatelům se plný text nezobrazuje