Mechanisms of regulation of the number of cells in the cell chain of diatoms

We proposed hypothesis that describes the mechanism of formation and disintegration of cell chains, according to which the number of cells in a chain is determined by the difference in the rates of cell division and the separation of chains into individual cells, and the maximum number of cells in the chain is achieved at the highest division rate. Experiments showed that the addition of phosphorus stimulates the formation of longer chains. We developed a simple mathematical model of the dynamics of the number of cells in cell chains.