Talk:Spirogyra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Spirogyra is within the scope of WikiProject Plants, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to plants and botany. For more information, visit the project page.
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale.

"These choloplasts have been the cause of the deaths of hundreds of people each year. Spirogyra is very dangerous and should be handled with as much care as is possible." ??? Surely this is vandalism?? 81.106.0.104 11:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

more should be added on its conjugation and asexual reproduction --Baoganghu 14:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit]  ???

Isn't Spirogyra a protist, not a plant?

Yeah, we learned so too. Can anyone explain? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.96.179.51 (talk • contribs) .

From the Protist article: "The green and red algae, along with a small group called the glaucophytes, appear to be close relatives of other plants, and so some authors treat them as Plantae despite their simple organization." Powers 16:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sexual or Asexual?

I thought conjugation wasn't a form of sexual reproduction, but somewhere in between sexual and asexual reproduction? The main issue is that there is no meoisis, but rather, an exchange of whole genetic material. Some bacteria swap DNA too, although I'm not sure it's the same thing as with spirogyra. Any biologists in the house? Spir 03:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

--- What we see here is a problem with using the same word to mean two things. In bacteria, conjugation happens when an F plasmid ( a small circular extrachromosomal piece of DNA) makes a connection to another bacteria called a sex pilus. When this happens, a piece of the chromosome can travel from one cell to the other mixing up the DNA in the recepient. Since this forms new combinations of DNA it is sexual reproduction.

Protists are eukaryotes, and thus have more than one chromosome. I am pretty sure that what happens is a fusion of two haploid cells to make a diploid cell that must then split by meiosis to make new haploid strains. Because the DNA mixes this is sexual reproduction. The name conjugation is used by analogy with bacteria because each filament forms a sort of sex pilus to a nearby cell. However the mechanism of conjugation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes differ.

I took a picture in the microscope the other day. If I can find it, I'll upload it. Rozzychan 12:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)