[4] The genus Cyclotella was described in 1838 by Louis Alphonse de Brébisson, a French botanist and photographer.
[5] Brébisson shares the credit of discovering the genus with Friedrich Traugott Kützing, a German pharmacist, botanist, and phycologist.
[6] Brébisson describes in the 1838 publication Flore de Normandie, Cyclotella "has a more or less elongated ovoid shape, it is swollen from both sides, and when its center is diaphanous, it resembles two tubular frustules united by their vertices ( translated from French ).
[11] Species that are most commonly found in marine environments are C. caspia, C. litoralis, C. meneghiniana, C. striata, and C. stylorwn.
[4] Marine diatoms and algae in general tend to flourish in higher osmolar concentrations due to the increased presence of carbon dioxide and nutrients to be utilized as sustenance, but the low-solute environment Schobert found to be most optimal for the growth of C. meneghiana is consistent with most Cyclotella being found in low-productivity mesotrophic to oligotrophic environments.
[11] Another study by Van de Vijver and Dessein found a new species of Cyclotella, C. deceusteriana, in the sub-antarctic region.
[13] One of the only ecological characteristics of Cyclotella that is consistent among most of its species is the fact that they are found in stagnant or near-stagnant waters and are immobile.
Many of the Cyclotella species that have been studied have been shown to be found in aquatic environments that are either slightly or highly alkaline.
Temperature ranges vary between species as well; it was mentioned earlier that C. deceusteriana was discovered in sub-antarctic regions, and C. gamma and C.quillensis have been found in the Northern United States and Saskatchewan, respectively.
use for cell wall biosynthesis are semiconductor metal oxides and extracellular fibers made of chitin.
Poly N-acetyl glucosamine chains are oriented in a parallel manner and contain intermolecular hydrogen bonds.
[17] Frustules contain areolas, that is orifices that mediate the passage of nutrients and exudates across the cell wall for sustenance.
The genus is photosynthetic like all other diatoms, so all species contain one or many pyrenoids traversed by a thylakoid membrane and a chloroplast within the endoplasmic reticulum.
The nucleus has been found to change locations in C. meneghiniana throughout generations as a result of the cell diameter gradually decreasing.
Once sexual reproduction is complete, the diameter of the offspring is larger and beyond the threshold once again, allowing for the production of another few hundred generations through the asexual division of auxophores.
Despite there being very little known about the internal morphology of Cyclotella, there have been a sizable number of studies done on the genus' molecular biology and genome.
Its genome has been identified to contain many methylated repetitive sequences, which are supposed to function as a way of limiting the occurrences of DNA transposition.
In comparison to many other diatoms and plant chloroplast studies, C. meninghiana has a diversely rearranged gene order for single copy regions in its genome.
[citation needed] The draft nuclear genome of Cyclotella cryptica strain CCMP332 is 171 Mb long.
Fossil assemblages have been found in glacial and interglacial segments in oligotrophic and mesotrophic rivers in Europe and Mediterranean regions.
Distinctions between the two species can also be described in the differences in stratigraphic distributions between the two, as C. paradistinguenda was found in an upper organic sequence of the sample compared to C.