Seminar · Chronobiology
Intrinsic Rhythms in a Giant Single-Celled Organism and the Interplay with Time-Dependent Drive, Explored via Self-Organized Macroscopic Waves
Eldad Afik · California Institute of Technology
Mon, Mar 28, 2022 · 00:00 UTC
Living Systems often seem to follow, in addition to external constraints and interactions, an intrinsic predictive model of the world — a defining trait of Anticipatory Systems. Here we study rhythmic behaviour in Caulerpa, a marine green alga, which appears to predict the day/night light cycle. Caulerpa consists of differentiated organs resembling leaves, stems and roots. While an individual can exceed a meter in size, it is a single multinucleated giant cell. Active transport has been hypothesized to play a key role in organismal development. It has been an open question in the literature wh