Tripod1404
Community Member
Not sure if this answers the question or not since we probably have hundreds of different species of Dino’s in our tanks. But certain dinoflagellate species go through apoptosis (a type of controled or programmed cell death) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. So dosing hydrogen peroxide may be activating this apoptosis pathway.
In their natural environment, presence of hydrogen peroxide signals to Dino’s the depletion of CO2. To put very simply, all photosynthetic organisms harvest energy from photons using chlorophyll or related molecules. This energy is used or excite electrons and powers an electron transport chain that recycles chemical energy and reducing power (ATP and NADPH) needed to fix CO2. Without CO2 to fix, ATP and NADPH cannot be spent and therefore cannot be recycled (as both these contain phosphate in it, they’re amounts are limited). However, chlorophyll cannot be turned off, so it will continue harvesting light energy regardless of downstream process that need energy. This is dangerous as if this energy is not dissipated, it will damage chlorophylls, components of electron transport chain and the membrane they sit on. There are numerous ways how this energy can be dissipated, and one mechanism involves transferring energetic electrons to oxygen to form superoxides, which can then be converted to hydrogen peroxide.
So accumulating of hydrogen peroxide signals to the Dino’s that their population reached to a critical upper limit and some of them should voluntarily kill themselves to reduce the demand for CO2. The biological or ecological benefits of this voluntary self sacrifice is somewhat unclear as Dino’s are single cellular, but the leading hypothesis is that this allows the fittest individuals of the population (ones that sustained the least oxidative damage etc.) to survive while weak and damaged individuals voluntarily kill themselves to improve the survival chances of remaining healthy cells.
In their natural environment, presence of hydrogen peroxide signals to Dino’s the depletion of CO2. To put very simply, all photosynthetic organisms harvest energy from photons using chlorophyll or related molecules. This energy is used or excite electrons and powers an electron transport chain that recycles chemical energy and reducing power (ATP and NADPH) needed to fix CO2. Without CO2 to fix, ATP and NADPH cannot be spent and therefore cannot be recycled (as both these contain phosphate in it, they’re amounts are limited). However, chlorophyll cannot be turned off, so it will continue harvesting light energy regardless of downstream process that need energy. This is dangerous as if this energy is not dissipated, it will damage chlorophylls, components of electron transport chain and the membrane they sit on. There are numerous ways how this energy can be dissipated, and one mechanism involves transferring energetic electrons to oxygen to form superoxides, which can then be converted to hydrogen peroxide.
So accumulating of hydrogen peroxide signals to the Dino’s that their population reached to a critical upper limit and some of them should voluntarily kill themselves to reduce the demand for CO2. The biological or ecological benefits of this voluntary self sacrifice is somewhat unclear as Dino’s are single cellular, but the leading hypothesis is that this allows the fittest individuals of the population (ones that sustained the least oxidative damage etc.) to survive while weak and damaged individuals voluntarily kill themselves to improve the survival chances of remaining healthy cells.
