Morphology,nutrition and taxonomy of an Aplanochytrium sp. from the Sargasso Sea

Aplanochytrium sp. 2400/57 was isolated from samples of sargasso weed collected in the Sargasso Sea on April 4, 1979. The monocentric eucarpic thallus of this organism produced aplanospores by successive bipartitioning. The cell wall contained only 20% polysaccharide, composed of fucose, galactose, xylose, glucose, and galacturonic acid. The guanine+cytosine content of the DNA (mol% G+C) was 37.6%. L-isoleucine, L-leucine, and L-proline were utilized as nitrogen sources in synthetic media of defined composition.