Abstract
Paramecium is a unicellular organism that swims in fresh water by beating thousands of cilia. When it is stimulated (mechanically, chemically, optically, thermally…), it often swims backward then turns and swims forward again. This “avoiding reaction” is triggered by a calcium-based action potential. For this reason, some authors have called Paramecium a “swimming neuron.” This review summarizes current knowledge about the physiological basis of behavior of Paramecium.
Footnotes
The author declares no competing financial interests.
This work was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche Grant ANR-20-CE30-0025-01, the Programme Investissements d’Avenir IHU FOReSIGHT Grant ANR-18-IAHU-01, the Sorbonne Université Programme Emergence Grant NEUROSWIM, and the Fondation Pour l’Audition Grant FPA RD-2017-2.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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