Chlamydomonas is a genus of
green algae consisting of
unicellular flagellates, found in stagnant water and on damp soil, in freshwater, seawater, and even in snow as "snow algae".
Chlamydomonas is used as a
model organism for
molecular biology, especially studies of
flagellar motility and
chloroplast dynamics, biogeneses, and genetics. One of the many striking features of
Chlamydomonas is that it contains
ion channels, (
channelrhodopsins), that are directly activated by light.
Some regulatory systems of
Chlamydomonas are more complex than their
homologs in
Gymnosperms, with evolutionarily related regulatory proteins being larger and containing additional domains.
