Amoeba (genus)
| Amoeba | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| (unranked): | Amoebozoa |
| Class: | Tubulinea |
| Order: | Euamoebida |
| Family: | Amoebidae |
| Genus: |
Amoeba Bory de Saint-Vincent, 1822 |
| Species | |
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Amoeba is a genus of single-celled amoeboids in the family Amoebidae. The type species of the genus is Amoeba proteus, a common freshwater organism, widely studied in classrooms and laboratories.
The earliest record of an organism resembling Amoeba was produced in 1755 by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, who named his discovery "der kleine Proteus" ("the little Proteus"), after Proteus, the shape-shifting sea-god of Greek Mythology. While Rösel's illustrations show a creature similar in appearance to the one now known as Amoeba proteus, his "little Proteus'' cannot be identified confidently with any modern species.
The term "Proteus animalcule" remained in use throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as an informal name for any large, free-living amoeboid.
In 1758, apparently without seeing Rösel's "Proteus" for himself, Carl Linnaeus included the organism in his own system of classification, under the name Volvox chaos. However, because the name Volvox had already been applied to a genus of flagellate algae, he later changed the name to Chaos chaos. In 1786, the Danish Naturalist Otto Müller described and illustrated a species he called Proteus diffluens, which was probably the organism known today as Amoeba proteus.
The genus Amiba, from the Greek amoibè (ἀμοιβή), meaning "change", was erected in 1822 by Bory de Saint-Vincent. In, 1830. the German naturalist C. G. Ehrenberg adopted this genus in his own classification of microscopic creatures, but changed the spelling to "Amoeba."
Species of Amoeba move and feed by extending temporary structures called pseudopodia. These are formed by the coordinated action of microfilaments within the cellular cytoplasm pushing out the plasma membrane which surrounds the cell. In Amoeba, the pseudopodia are approximately tubular, and rounded at the ends (lobose). The cell's overall shape may change rapidly as pseudopodia are extended and retracted into the cell body. An Amoeba may produce many pseudopodia at once, especially when freely floating. When crawling rapidly along a surface, the cell may take a roughly monopodial form, with a single dominant pseudopod deployed in the direction of movement.
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