A recent study shows how diatoms find the building material for their cells walls.
Diatoms are unicellular algae that are native in many waters. These microalgae need silicate to build their strong mineral cell wall. A recent study published in the current issue of "Nature Communications" demonstrates that diatoms are able to trace silicate minerals in the water. Moreover, they can even move actively to areas where the concentration of silicates is especially high.
The video illustrating this movement can be downloaded from the Nature webpage (or here).
Read the paper online or click to download
Bondoc, K.G. V., Heuschele, J., Gillard, J., Vyverman, W. & Pohnert, G. (2016) Selective silicate-directed motility in diatoms. Nature Communications, 7, 10540.