Characterization of a photosynthetic Euglena strain isolated from an acidic hot mud pool of a volcanic area of Costa Rica

✍ Scribed by Ana Sittenfeld; Marielos Mora; José Marı́a Ortega; Federico Albertazzi; Andrés Cordero; Mercedes Roncel; Ethel Sánchez; Maribel Vargas; Mario Fernández; Jürgen Weckesser; Aurelio Serrano

• Book ID: 104307760
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 486 KB
• Volume: 42
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0168-6496
• DOI: 10.1016/s0168-6496(02)00327-6

✦ Synopsis

Conspicuous green patches on the surface of an acidic hot mud pool located near the Rinco ¤ n de la Vieja volcano (northwestern Costa Rica) consisted of apparently unialgal populations of a chloroplast-bearing euglenoid. Morphological and physiological studies showed that it is a non-flagellated photosynthetic Euglena strain able to grow in defined mineral media at temperatures up to 40 ‡C and exhibiting higher thermotolerance than Euglena gracilis SAG 5/15 in photosynthetic activity analyses. Molecular phylogeny studies using 18S rDNA and GapC genes indicated that this strain is closely related to Euglena mutabilis, another acid-tolerant photosynthetic euglenoid, forming a clade deeply rooted in the Euglenales lineage. To our knowledge this is the most thermotolerant euglenoid described so far and the first Euglenozoan strain reported to inhabit acidic hot aquatic habitats.