autofluorescence

Description:

Merismopedia (mer-is-mo-pea-dee-a) is a blue-green alga or cyanobacterium. The genus is distinguished by the square-packed pattern of the coccoid cells. It is common in sediments, but the number of cells which occur in a colony may vary from only a few to thousands. As a cyanobacterium, the photosynthetic pigments are located throughout the cytoplasm. These can be seen if the cells are illuminated with ultra-violet light and then the distribution of the pigment detected by the resulting fluorescence. Fluorescence microscopy.