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Over time, we’ve gotten some comments asking about our channel name like…why we picked
amoebas and what is an amoeba anyway?
Well, it turns out amoebas are easy to draw, and we are sisters so our channel name seemed…practical.
Kind of.
Now, we don’t really resemble real life amoebas with our eyes, stars on our heads…heads.
None of those things are very amoeba like.
If you’d like to see some real life amoeba footage, we have a great channel recommendation
in the video details.
Part of it is that we happen to really love amoebas and other protists.
It just turns out that sometimes people forget about protists.
I mean, they’re not exactly easy to see.
Most protists are microscopic.
Most are unicellular- which means they are made up of one cell- although there are some
multicellular protists.
Protists are eukaryotes, which means that unlike prokaryotes, they do have a nucleus
and other membrane-bound organelles.
Many protists can move and so if you’re curious about how they do their locomotion,
they might have flagella or cilia or in our case as an amoeba---they might move around
by extending their pseudopods.
Some protist cells are animal-like where they won’t typically have cell walls while others
are plant or fungus like, where you will see a cell wall.
Protists are such a diverse group because it’s a category many organisms are put into
when they don’t quite meet the requirements for a plant, animal, or fungus.
If you wanted to find a protist, where would you look?
Well, that really depends on what kind of protist you are looking for.
Protists can be found in the water---both saltwater and freshwater, in the soil, or
in other animals.
Just some examples.
If you were trying to find a protist, you would likely want to consider what it eats.
Protists can be autotrophs or heterotrophs.
Recall that autotrophs make their own food, and in the case of protists, it’s common
to see photosynthetic autotrophs.
This can include diatoms and euglena as some example autotrophs.
Although euglena is tricky because euglena can actually act as a heterotroph too.
Heterotroph protists eat other things.
So amoebas are one.
So are paramecia.
And slime molds.
That’s a confusing type because many times when you see the word “mold” you think
of fungi, which we’ll get to later.
But slime molds are protists.
Protist reproduction is actually very complex, and we’d need another video to cover it.
Some do binary fission, a simple asexual process of just splitting that we also talked about
in our bacteria video.
But many do sexual reproduction too.
Some protist life cycles include lengthy haploid and diploid stages, especially in some of
the parasitic types of protists.
So, again, another video.
So you may wonder, how does a protist really affect me?
Well, protists do a lot of good in the world.
Photosynthetic protists in aquatic environments act as important producers---producing oxygen
and also being a part of the food chain.
Many types of protists, like the fascinating slime molds are decomposers.
Many organisms have relationships with protists that they depend on.
Examples?
Many coral species depend on a certain types of protist to fix carbon for them; some types
of insects require protists in their gut to help them digest certain types of plant matter.
But there are some problematic protists.
One example for humans is that they can cause disease.
Many people think mosquitoes are the sole cause of malaria, which is a potentially deadly
disease.
But actually, mosquitoes are a carrier for the disease.
Because malaria is actually caused by a type of parasitic protist that lives in a specific
type of mosquito’s gut and can reproduce in the human body.
By working on mosquito control in areas where malaria is found, it can help prevent the
protist from spreading.
Also, there are medications for malaria that can keep the protist from being able to reproduce
in the human body.
We should point out, there are also dangerous types of amoeba.
Most amoeba species are harmless to humans, but there is a species of amoeba that can
be lethal to humans if it is able to enter the human body.
While cases of this infection are very rare, it has a high mortality rate.
It’s important that research continues to look for ways to treat it.
And the Irish Potato Famine in the 1800’s, which caused so much destruction of potato
crops, was caused by a type of protist that resembles a fungus but is actually a protist.
Learn more about this in the video details.
So, we covered a lot about protists now.
What about fungi?
They’re far more fun than one may realize.
Overdone?
Perhaps.
Fungi, like protists, are also eukaryotes.
Most fungi have cells walls made of carbohydrate called chitin.
You can also find chitin as part of the exoskeletons of insects- kind of cool.
So if you were looking for fungi, where would you look?
Many people automatically think of areas that are dark with moisture, which sure you can
find fungi there, but you can actually find fungi in all kinds of places: in the soil,
in your house, in aquatic environments, on you…
When you see fungi, they might remind you of something like a plant, but if considering
molecular genetics, fungi are actually more related to animals than they are plants.
Fungi don’t require light for photosynthesis like plants do because fungi don’t do photosynthesis.
Unlike the classification of protists, which as we mentioned can include autotrophs, fungi
are heterotrophs and therefore consume organic matter.
Most fungi are multicellular, but there are unicellular fungi too.
Many types of fungi can do both sexual and asexual reproduction.
Both of these forms of reproduction often involve the use of spores---think way smaller
than plant seeds---and these can be spread far away from the parent fungus by wind or
by animals or another method.
Like the protists, fungi reproduction can be very complex and we’d need another video
to cover it.
When people think of fungi, they often think of something gross.
Or not good.
Now it is true that fungi can be problematic.
For example- yeast infections, ringworm, thrush, athlete’s foot- these are all examples of
fungal infections that can affect humans.
Fungi can also be parasites of many organisms, like this nematode.
Although many species of nematodes are also parasitic too so sometimes it’s a parasite
on a parasite.
Fungi can also attack plants and therefore cause destruction to crops.
But fungi do a lot of good.
They are excellent decomposers which is very important for ecosystems.
Many types of fungi make up food sources for other organisms.
Many fungi are involved in some of the foods humans eat: like producing some types of cheese.
Or helping bread rise by using yeast.
Yeast is a fungus.
Or mushrooms---mushrooms themselves are a fungus.
Many types of fungi have symbiotic mutual relationships with other organisms.
For example, fungi can help increase the surface area of plant roots for so many species of
plants and help the plant access more water and minerals.
In return, the fungus gets some products of the plant’s photosynthesis.
Or there is lichen, which is a symbiotic relationship of a fungus and typically an algae.
We mention lichen in our ecological succession video where you can see its role as a pioneer
species---and lichen is also a food and habitat source for organisms.
In medicine, we should mention that many antibiotics are derived from fungus.
In fact, the first antibiotic – Penicillin – was accidentally discovered from a mold.
A fungus.
So, overall, fungi and protists continue to fascinate us.
And scientists still learn more about them all the time.
Did you know there has been research on the potential use of phytoplankton as a source
of biofuel?
Or that some types of fungi are used as biocontrol agents against pest insects as an alternative
to chemical pesticides?
Or that yeasts have roles in biotechnology, like recombinant DNA technology?
You can learn more about these from some further reading suggestions in the video details.
Maybe one day you will be part of discovering more about what these amazing and sometimes
overlooked organisms can do.
Well, that’s it for the Amoeba Sisters and, we remind you to stay curious!