What are diatoms?

1 Answer
Dr. Hayek · Mandira P.
Sep 29, 2015

Diatoms are aquatic microalgae.

Explanation:

Diatoms are aquatic microalgae. Each of the tens of thousands of extant diatom species assembles a silica-based frustule with a particular 3D shape and patterned, nanoscale features (e.g., pores, channels, protuberances) that are replicated with fidelity upon biological reproduction.

Sustained reproduction of a given diatom species can yield enormous numbers of daughter diatoms with frustules of similar (genetically controlled) morphology (e.g., 80 reproduction cycles would yield #2^80# or more than 1 trillion trillion replicated frustules).

Here is a picture of a diatom:
enter image source here

Related questions
See all questions in Three Domains of Life
Impact of this question
2594 views around the world
You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License