UV protection of euglenoids: computation of the electromagnetic response

Abstract

Euglenoids are a group of predominantly free-living unicellular microorganisms that mostly live in freshwater bodies but can also be found in marine and brackish waters. These organisms have a characteristic that distinguishes them form the other protists: they are covered by a surface pellicle formed by S-shaped overlapping bands which resemble a diffraction grating. These microorganisms have developed numerous protection mechanisms intended to avoid or reduce the damage produced by UV radiation, such as the production of pigments and the repair mechanisms in hours of darkness and during daylight. In a recent paper we have investigated the role played by the pellicle of Euglenoids in the protection of the cell against UV radiation, by means of an electromagnetic approach based on the approximation of the pellicle profile by a one-dimensional diffraction grating. This simplified model allowed us to confirm that under certain incidence conditions, the corrugation of the pellicle helps increase the UV reflection, and consequently, diminish the UV radiation that enters the cell. In order to analyze the electromagnetic response of the whole cell, we extend two different approaches to calculate the reflected response: a simulation method especially developed to deal with complex biological structures that permits the introduction of the scattering object via an electron microscopy image, and the integral method, which has been widely used to compute the electromagnetic response of finite structures. Numerical results of near and far fields are shown.