Ref ID : 7666
Jean Grain, Pierre de Puytorac, and Claude-Alain Groliere; [Quelques Precisions sur L'ultrastructure et la Position Systematique du Cilie Mesodinium rubrum, et sur la Constitution de ses Symbiontes Chloroplastiques]. Protistologica XVIII(1):7-21, 1982
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The ciliary structures of Mesodinium rubrum are composed of two equatorial belts; in one of them, there are 40 longitudial double kineties, in which the presence of postciliary and kinetodesmal fibers allows us to orient correctly the cell; the other belt, anterior in regard of the first, contains 40 ciliary packs which are very different of the Hypotrich cirri; buccal remnants (two types of toxicysts, some kinetosomes and microtubular ribbons) are found at the anterior pole of the cell. The structure of the double kineties, the presence of the ciliary packs, the absence of pellicular alveoli, the absence of kinetosomes in the naked regions are all characters which remove M. rubrum from the family Didiniidae. The symbionts are identical, for several characters, to Cryptophycea; some nuclei, which were previously wrongly assignated to the Ciliate, are isolated in cytoplasmic regions which also contain some mitochondria with lamellar cristae and some (lipoproteic ?) globules, two elements identical to those of the symbionts; it would be possible that these nuclei effectively belong to the symbionts, which were previously supposed anucleated; and argument is that the cytoplasm which surrounds the plast-pyrenoid-starch complex can possess excroissances turned to the center of the host-cell; then, the symbionts would be complete cells.