Fluorescence in microalgae

Fluorescence in microalgae? Anyway what is meant by fluorescence? Have you ever heard about this before?

Fluorescence, a type of luminescence, occurs in gas, liquid or solid chemical systems. Fluorescence is brought about by absorption of photons in the singlet ground state promoted to a singlet excited state. The spin of the electron is still paired with the ground state electron, unlike phosphorescence. As the excited molecule returns to ground state, it involves the emission of a photon of lower energy, which corresponds to a longer wavelength, than the absorbed photon. 

                                                                                            (http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/) 

So regarding to the term  "fluorescence" , let me explain more and relate on fluorescence in microalgae.

Fluorescence is one of the example of algal growth quantification other than cell count,chlorophyll determination,optical density and dry weight.It can be measured using fluorometer.

There are some studies have been done about fluorescence in microalgae.For example: 

Green autofluorescence (GAF) :

•       a valuable taxonomic feature for dinoflagellates.
•       green fluorescence staining has been widely proposed or adopted to measure cell viability (or physiological state) in areas such as apoptosis of phytoplankton, pollutant stresses on algae, metabolic activity of algae, and testing treatment technologies for ships' ballast water.
•       useful for microscopic study of algal morphology, especially to visualize cellular components such as eyespots, nucleus, aerotopes, spines, and chloroplasts. 
•       can be used to visualize and enumerate dinoflagellate cysts in marine and estuarine sediments in the context of anticipating and monitoring harmful algal blooms and in tracking potentially harmful dinoflagellates transported in ships' ballast tanks.                                   (Ying Zhong Tang , 2007)