I am presently playing with microbeads as food particles for ingestion by ciliates. Although I am not unhappy with those that I make (methylmethacrylate / serum albumine mixtures), I could imagine there is something better. I am looking for something with a density near that of liquid medium that can be crosslinked with additional components changing the surface parameters (charge and hydrophobicity). Any good ideas?
My Russian colleague Aleksander Railkin used the corundum microparticles for simulation of food particles in ciliates (see References in article: Konstantynenko L.A and Dovgal I.V. The nutrition rates in peritrichous ciliates (Ciliophora, Peritrichia) under conditions of the treatment facilities of Zhytomir (Ukraine). Natura Montenegrina. 2009. 8, 2. P. 51-61). Naturally the density was much more that medium.
No Miroslav, I am not that complicated. We grow Tetrahymena pyriformis simply on traditional complex medium. By the way, this organism grows much better on food cells, in our case Escherichia coli, than axenically. For Tetrahymena thermophila, this effect is much less pronounced. What we do want, is to apply certain enzymes or chemicals bound to surfaces in order to follow the fate of such particles with definde properties during uptake and digestion.
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