Cell cycle and cell signal transduction in marine phytoplankton

Abstract

As unicellular phytoplankton, the growth of a marine phytoplankton population results directly from the completion of a cell cycle, therefore, cell-environment communication is an important way which involves signal transduction pathways to regulate cell cycle progression and contribute to growth, metabolism and primary production and respond to their surrounding environment in marine phytoplankton. Cyclin-CDK and CaM/Ca2+ are essentially key regulators in control of cell cycle and signal transduction pathway, which has important values on both basic research and applied biotechnology. This paper reviews progress made in this research field, which involves the identification and characterization of cyclins and cell signal transduction system, cell cycle-control mechanisms to marine phytoplankton cells, cell cycle proteins as a marker of a terminal event to estimate the growth rate of phytoplankton at the species level, cell cycle-dependent toxin production of toxic algae and cell cycle progression regulated by environmental factors.