Abstract
Gymnodinium aeruginosum has the usual fine structure of a dinoflagellate but does not seem to contain a well elaborated peduncle or a microtubular basket. Naked cells are surrounded by a single large amphiesmal vesicle. It houses an endosymbiont with typical blue-green cryptophycean chloroplasts (generally only one), cryptophycean starch grains in the periplastidal cytoplasm without a nucleomorph, and two membranes separating the periplastidal cytoplasm from the cryptophycean cytoplasm which contains mitochondria, ER, vesicles and ribosomes, but no eukaryotic nucleus. The endosymbiont is surrounded by a single membrane. Possible ways of the acquisition of the endosymbiont and the problem of the existence of ribosomes within a compartment without nucleus are discussed.
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Devoted to Prof. Dr.L. Geitler, the Nestor of phycology and endosymbiosis research, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birthday.
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Schnepf, E., Winter, S. & Mollenhauer, D. Gymnodinium aeruginosum (Dinophyta): A blue-green dinoflagellate with a vestigial, anucleate, cryptophycean endosymbiont. Plant Syst Evol 164, 75–91 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00940431
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00940431