Determining surface areas of marine alga cells by acid-base titration method.
A new method for determining the surface area of living marine alga cells was described. The method uses acid-base titration to measure the surface acid/base amount on the surface of alga cells and uses the BET (Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller) equation to estimate the maximum surface acid/base amount, assuming that hydrous cell walls have carbohydrates or other structural compounds which can behave like surface Brönsted acid-base sites due to coordination of environmental H2O molecules. The method was applied to 18 diverse alga species (including 7 diatoms, 2 flagellates, 8 green algae and 1 red alga) maintained in seawater cultures. For the species examined, the surface areas of individual cells ranged from 2.8 x 10(-8) m2 for Nannochloropsis oculata to 690 x 10(-8) m2 for Dunaliella viridis, specific surface areas from 1,030 m2.g-1 for Dunaliella salina to 28,900 m2.g-1 for Pyramidomonas sp. Measurement accuracy was 15.2%. Preliminary studies show that the method may be more promising and accurate than light/electron microscopic measurements for coarse estimation of the surface area of living algae.
Wang
X
X
Ocean University of Qingdao, P.R. China.
Ma
Y
Y
Su
Y
Y
D002455:Cell Division / Q000187:drug effects; D048429:Cell Size; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000737:chemistry; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000737:chemistry / Q000166:cytology* / Q000187:drug effects; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D013499:Surface Properties; D017186:Titrimetry / Q000379:methods