HIGH-RESOLUTION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY OF GLYCOPROTEINS: THE CRYSTALLINE

Lobomonas piriformis is a member of an order of green algae (Volvocales) that have crystalline glycoprotein cell walls. As part of a program of investigation of these glycoproteins and their architecture we have studied the cell wall of Lobomonas by a variety of chemical, electron-microscopical and image-analysis techniques. Lobomonas and Vitreochlamys incisa show a very similar structure in their cell walls and represent 1 of the 4 classes into which all the structures of the walls of these algae that we have so far examined fall. The 2 classes that we have previously studied in detail, represented by Chlamydomonas reinhardii and Chlorogonium elongatum, have a crystalline component of the wall that is a more or less smooth continuous surface overlying an amorphous inner wall layer. Although Lobomonas also has this 2-layer structure, the crystal-line layer consists of distinct plate3, each of which is built around a single, very coherent crystal lattice. The polar nature of the architecture of the cell wall is shown by sectioning and by examination of the cell-wall surface by metal-shadowing of carbon replicas, both of intact cells and of isolated cell-wall plates. There are great similarities in chemical composition between the glycoproteins of the cell wall of C. reinhardii and those of Lobomonas. Both have a large content of hydroxyproline i