Fig. 6: Chlamydomonas curt1abc mutants display asymmetric thylakoid division.
a 3D images generated from the Z-stacks of confocal laser scanning micrographs of WT C13 and curt1abc cells grown in liquid TAP media. Magenta represents chlorophyll fluorescence. b Relative size distributions of Chlamydomonas thylakoids as measured through chlorophyll fluorescent volume reconstruction of n = 393 and n = 501 WT C13 and curt1abc cells, respectively. Overall thylakoid volume averages do not differ significantly between WT C13 and curt1abc (inset) according to two-sided Student’s t-test (p = 1.2 × 10−2). c Thylakoid volume distributions of below-average (left), average (middle), and above-average (right) sub-populations observed. According to two-sided Student’s t-tests, below-average curt1abc thylakoid volumes are significantly smaller (p = 7.4 × 10−4), and above-average curt1abc thylakoid volumes are significantly larger (p = 6.8 × 10−3) than in WT C13, respectively, while average-sized thylakoid volumes did not differ significantly (p = 7.8 × 10−2). The experiment was performed twice with similar results. For (b, c): Boxplots centre line = median; cross = mean; boxes = 25th–75th percentiles; whiskers = 1.5 × IQR; circles = outliers; all datapoints shown. d Representative transmission electron micrographs of WT C13 (top) and curt1abc mutant (bottom) Chlamydomonas cell thin sections. A total of n = 30 WT and n = 61 curt1abc cells were observed in the course of one experiment.
