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Photoreception and photomovements of microorganisms

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Abstract

Many freely motile microorganisms can perceive and transduce external photic stimuli to the motor apparatus, eventually moving, by means of various behavioural strategies, into environments in which the illumination conditions are the most favourable for their life. In different microorganisms, a wide range of chromophores operate as light detectors, each of them set in a special molecular pocket that, in its turn, can be linked to another component of the transduction chain. The diverse photosensors are organized in special (and in many cases dedicated) photoreceptor units or subcellular organelles. The main molecular mechanisms connecting the early event of photon absorption to the formation of the signalling state down to the dark steps of the transduction chain are discussed in a selected number of case examples. The possible importance of an intensive multidisciplinary approach to these problems in an evolutionary perspective is finally briefly outlined.

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  1. Istituto di Biofisica CNR, Via G. Moruzzi 1, Pisa, Italy

    Antonella Sgarbossa, Giovanni Checcucci & Francesco Lenci

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  1. Antonella Sgarbossa
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  2. Giovanni Checcucci
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  3. Francesco Lenci
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This paper is dedicated to our querida Professor Silvia Braslavsky on the occasion of her 60th birthday.

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Iseki et al.50 have recently discovered and biochemically characterized a new type of blue-light receptor flavoprotein, photo-activated adenylyl cyclase, which mediates the step-up photophobic response of Euglena gracilis.

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Sgarbossa, A., Checcucci, G. & Lenci, F. Photoreception and photomovements of microorganisms. Photochem Photobiol Sci 1, 459–467 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1039/b110629e

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