Diurnal and circadian rhythms in the turbidity of growing Skeletonema costatum cultures

Skeletonema costatum (Grev.) Cleve grown in batch culture at low light intensity under a 14 h light: 10 h dark photocycle showed exponential cell proliferation (1.1 doublings d^-1) without significant phasing of the cell division by the light: dark cycle. The growth in carbon concentration was, however, restricted to the light period. The turbidity of the culture closely followed the carbon oattern, and was not affected by the increase in the cell number during the dark period. It was found that a trustule suspension had only approximately 1% of the turbidity of the corresponding intact algae. Culture turbidity was therefore regarded as a biomass parameter similar to the carbon concentration, without direct correlation to the timing of the cell division. The short-time variations in the turbidity of growing algal cultures were further studied in a cage culture turbidostat. The growth rate (based on turbidity) increased rapidly during the first half of the light period, decreased slightly towards the evening and was zero throughout the dark period. When transformed to continuous light, the growth of the culture continued to show damped oscillations for up to 1 wk, but with a period of 26.7 h instead of 24 h. The same circadian rhythm was observed in chlorophyll content, and is thus possibly a reflection of a freely oscillating internal biological clock. The cage culture turbidostat was found to be a suitable device for studies of the photocycle related regulation of biosynthesis in S. costatum.