Doctor Pickle

Doctor Pickle
(Crystallomuria medicus)
Information
Creator	Colddigger Other
Week/Generation	27/166
Habitat	Slarti Subpolar Riparian, Slarti Mudflat, Drake Prairie, Flisch Subpolar Beach
Size	250 Centimeters
Primary Mobility	Unknown
Support	Chitin Plates, Turgor in Red Tissue
Diet	Photosynthesis, Detritivore
Respiration	Passive (Lenticels)
Thermoregulation	Ectotherm
Reproduction	Sexual, Spores, Fruiting Body, Asexual Root Budding
Taxonomy
Domain Genus Species	Eukaryota Crystallomuria Crystallomuria medicus

Ancestor:	Descendants:
Creeping Crystal

The doctor pickle split from its ancestor, and spread out to the surrounding prairies and beaches. The areas they colonize end up being rather devoid of other flora, resulting in low biodiversity. These colonies, called wards, commonly span a few hectares in size pocked with the fat crystals in a mildly uniform fashion. Fauna life may use it as a temporary home, a possible place to rest or to hide and recover. However the only thing consistent to eat here are the crystals themselves, and doctor pickles put up a fight.

Defense

At the very top of the crystal, past the growth point of the photosynthetic plates, exists a distinct organ system derived from the hollow-based reproductive structure of its lineage. A hollow, whoopee cushion shaped, sac sits inside at the very top of the crystal. It acts as a massive reservoir for compounds that flood in, produced by the surrounding tissue. These compounds, much of which are derived from the devastating cellulosebane fumigant, form a mace-like cocktail that burns the skin, eyes, and mouths of any would be herbivores. Surrounding this sac is tissue that can squeeze it in order to force it's contents out. This is achieved by rapidly moving water out from this tissue into the surrounding body and flattening the sac. This pushes the mace upward through a funnel valve, housed in a multi-plated horn on top, that atomizes the mace into a puff that wafts and fills the surrounding air.

It must be mentioned that these doctor pickle compounds, though less devastating when taking affect in comparison to their ancestral chemistry, are considerably more effective over all in their ability to defend their creator, being able to burn or irritate mucus membrane and wet tissue in general. The cellulosebane fumigant of old had acted in a more selective manner toward living things that relied on wood, or cellulose, destroying tissue to the point of death. Having been coupled with the gratuitous and unrestrained release of spore clouds the airborne weapon of the cellulosebane had forced a disastrous selection process on its environment, Plents, Purple Flora, and Black Flora were destroyed indiscriminately through entire biomes. This kind of action, coupled with such a specialized weapon, meant creating a world filled with hungry fauna completely unfazed by their clouds of doom and with nothing to eat but the crystals themselves.

The doctor pickle has side stepped such folly, as had been previously described, with application being more reserved in release, more general in what it can affect, and less devastating in results.

Fruiting Body

Reproduction through spores has been redeveloped. Unlike many terrestrial crystals, which form and store their spores directly in the inner hollow (if they're of the hollow crystal lineage) of either branches or their main body and then open up to release them, doctor pickles form a more specialized organ. The only branch, or limb, that this crystal will grow is a fruiting body, and only grows one every two years. Fruiting bodies consist of a brittle stalk mostly made of green tissue with a cord of red tissue lacking any hollow filling its center, a round nearly completely hollow ball on the end of the stalk, and long wiry strands of red tissue directly exposed hanging off a single point on this ball opposite of the stalk. These long red strands act both to catch wind or flowing water, or get stuck on passing fauna. All these options work to snap the fruiting body away violently and carry it off somewhere else.

The hollow ball of the fruiting body can actually float on water. It often gets moved by the resulting streams from glacial or snow melt, and can be shipped along beaches with tides and currents.

Phototropism and Movement

Being a member of the hollow crystal lineage it bears a distinct air filled chamber in it's center. The immediate tissue surrounding this hollow chamber has taken up a more mobile role. Through the act of osmosis portions of the chamber wall expand to deform it's shape, while networks of thin tendon-like strips of tissue shrink between the surface of the doctor pickle and the hollow chamber, so as to morph the shelled surface into a greater area for potential photosynthesis. This movement is controlled by each plate providing chemical signaling when struck by light, the intensity of the chemical signal corresponds in kind with the intensity of the light. Because of this movement the surface of this organism slowly ripples throughout the day, then settles into a more cylindrical shape at night. If damaged the surface can more rapidly contract from the point of contact, this allows the mace horn to be aimed slightly more at the source of danger.

Internal Movement of Water and Nutrients

F1. Close up of the layering of permeable and impermeable tissues; F2. Close up of osmotic bulbs and passage polyps; F3. Close up of nitrogen fixing microbial colony layers.

Like it's cellulosebane crystal ancestor, the internal soft tissue of doctor pickle is made up of sheets of tissue distinguished by an impermeable layer between them and joined together by masses of structures called osmotic bulbs and passage polyps that act as its means of water and nutrients transport. Both of these structures find their developmental origin in the impermeable layer cells. From there they push their way into both adjacent sheets of red tissue and differentiate into the more complex mature organs.

The osmotic bulb acts like an osmotic pump, it is an organ comprised of three distinct pieces; the outlet manifold, the reservoir sac, and the squeeze tissue. Water from the surrounding tissue enters the squeeze tissue, which inflates considerably. Once a threshold of water content difference between the squeeze tissue and the reservoir sac exists then the squeeze tissue begins dumping it's water contents into the reservoir sac it surrounds. A second threshold is met once the reservoir is full and the behavior of the squeeze tissue returns to the previous mode. This inflation causes pressure to occur on the reservoir sac and forces water up and through the outlet manifold, which passes through the impermeable layer, then from which it enters and spreads into the above sheet of red tissue.

Passage polyps are much larger structures comprised of two basic parts, the trunk and the exchange tendrils. The exchange tendrils actively and passively take in and release compounds to allow back and forth exchange of nutrients and hormones between layers. The tendrils of neighboring passage polyps have extreme proximity, this allows the concentration of nutrients entering a layer to be highest nearest the next polyp in line to continue the flow to the next layer, it even allows these structures to bypass releasing into the layer at all if needed (for example hormonal signals meant for tissue not immediately adjacent to one another).The trunk acts as a means to attach the pair of tendril clusters as well as control the flow of substances, becoming a kind of check point for more complex compounds that could be potentially toxic or unnecessary to be broken down; in this sense it could be compared to a simple liver, though very small.

Size comparisons between osmotic bulbs and a passage polyp, as well as display of 3d shape of those organs.

Nitrogen Fixation

This layer of red tissue, dense with transport structures, permeable tissues, and shifting shapes, comprises only the outer third of the inner tissue of a doctor pickle crystal. Further in the two red tissue layers switch ratios, the impermeable layer opening up to house huge colonies of Nitrocycle that make up the remaining two thirds of the crystals inner mass. This hollow microbiome provides a substantial portion of the nitrogen it's housing organism uses to survive in exchange for a safe place to thrive and reliable supply of sugars and other nutrients. Lining the walls of the central hollow itself is a layer of firm tissue that acts as a base for the thin tendons to reach past the Nitrocycle layer and allows the crystal shape to be manipulated.

Gas Exchange

Gas exchange is performed along the spaces between the photosynthetic green plates. The red tissue in these cracks are slightly spongy with pores, these pores are the entryways to vast networks of tubes that pass through the impermeable layers. Gaseous oxygen is dissolved from these tubes into a thin mucus layer belonging to the trunks of passage polyps, these structures then transfer the dissolved oxygen into the surrounding tissues alongside other compounds while preventing foreign bodies that may have entered the air tubes from further infiltrating. These air tubes lead all the way to the Nitrocycle layers and allows a continual feed of atmospheric nitrogen to reach them.

Outer Plates of Green Tissue

The green plates that cover the surface of the crystal are much stouter than many of its relatives and ancestors, this is to allow greater shifting to capture sunlight with the movement of its surface. This photosynthetic tissue is, like with all true crystals, actually an obligate symbiont with a distinct genome and body structure of its own. Compared to it's red tissue counterpart the green tissue has become relatively simplified, relying on much of its nutrient transport and care to be the responsibility of its partner.

The body of the green tissue is discontinuous, the plates are not directly fused but rather even use the red tissue for communicating amongst itself. The structure of a single plate is not homogenous. The innermost sections are wafer thin sheets, infiltrated by red tissue, where nutrient exchange occurs between the two tissues. Gas exchange occurs here for the green tissue, one of the few things the plate does not directly rely on the red tissue for, entering pores in the green wafers that become tubes that feed out into the rest of the plate.Traveling outward these sheets become thicker, the red tissue becoming less pronounce, the cell walls in this region are particularly thick and dense to act as the main supporting structure of the plate. In many crystals this structure provides a significant portion of the body's support as the plates span the length of the entire organism above ground, However in Doctor Pickle its support is less important. More of the structural support is provided by firm red tissues and turgor playing off one another. The outer layer of the green plate is devoid of red tissue, and packed tightly with photosynthetic cells, under a layer of thickly walled protective epidermal cells.

Roots

F1 storage lobes, F2 transport cords, F3 indistinct red tissue of root, B2 green tissue dormant bud, B1 growing tip shield

The root structure, being a crystal flora, lacks any bark or covering to separate it from the outside environment beyond its thin epidermis. The reason for this is because it uses this entire surface as a means of actively digesting it's surroundings. Due to the release of digestive enzymes into the surrounding soils, it results in changing the local soil environment into something not very hospitable to most pathogens or potential parasites. The various compounds released by the root into the soil already creates an environment not particularly welcoming to purple Flora or other competitive organisms, but it also releases compounds found in its ancestral lineage of cellulosebane which have an adverse effect on the cell walls of various Flora that rely on cellulose. This allelopathic affect is what causes the areas colonized by this organism to appear so barren.

Extending out from the initial surface of the root are many heavily branching hands which continue to Branch into hyphae-like bristles or villi with the explicit purpose of increasing the surface area similarly to the root hairs of Earth plants or the mycelium of Earth fungi, playing a role similar to both. The tissue structure of these bristles and hands are not distinguishable from the surrounding tissue of the root itself, nutrients and water taken in passively flow through the tissue toward the main root.

In the more developed portion of the root toward the center, once getting past the indistinct red tissue, what is found is that the tissue gradually becomes more organized in a fashion comparable to the layering found in the above ground body of the doctor pickle, with long layers of cells where nutrients and water passively move about separated by an impermeable layer dotted with structures for forcing material in a particular direction.

Even further toward the center of the root are dense lobes of no particular uniform shape, these dense structures are used by the organism as long-term storage of various materials including water and starches and fats. If the crystal takes up toxic compounds it gets stored in these lobes, the cell clusters forming hard cysts that then become cut off from the rest of the organism.

Throughout the indistinct outer layers of red tissue in the roots, there can be found small beads of green tissue, essentially buds, that remained dormant until a particular threshold distance from the above ground body is reached. Distances depend on genetic variables of the colony, which in turn determine hormone sensitivity and production, both of which control this dormancy. Commonly this distance ends up being 4-5 meters between crystals. These buds don't have any particular arrangements in the roots, they're shed by the root tip shield into the red tissue as the root grows.

At the very end of the root the root tip shield can be found which acts as a hard casing that the growing tip can shove through soil so as not to be damaged as it extends. This root tip does not take part in sensing the contents of its surroundings, nor taking up nutrients or water. Both of those jobs are left to the growing red tissue behind it.

Reproduction

Doctor Pickle reproduction

Mitosis

The cells of both the red and green tissues are dikaryotic, a trait that has been with the lineage since first diverging from Protosagania. The replication and proliferation of the somatic cells of the binucleid lineages must go through closed nucleus mitosis, unless otherwise having developed alternatives, in order to maintain chromosomal number stability. The method of mitosis among the cells of the doctor pickle are unremarkable among the crystal lineages.

Mitosis starts off with spindles of microtubules growing to attach the two nuclei to the equivalent of the four cardinal directions in the cell. One nucleus to the north and west, the other to the south and east (or some other rotationally symmetrical version of this). In a North East, South West orientation contractile rings develop around the respective membranes of both nuclei, and in the same orientation a microtubule tether appears joining the two contractile rings. The chromosome at this point have condensed and formed chromatids, duplicated and ready for division.

Next the spindles begin to contract, pulling the nuclei into elongate forms. The tether between them causes a sickle shape to occur, and prevent the nucleus from being pulled against the cell membrane by the nonopposing forces of the spindles. During this process of karyokinesis, the splitting of the nuclei, chromatids inside are being pulled apart toward each spindle point as well.

Once the chromatids are separated the nuclear contractile rings begin pinching off the middle of the membraneous layer they attach to. Further out, along the cell membrane a third and much larger contractile ring develops to begin splitting the cytoplasm in the cell. Soon after, the nuclei are split entirely, the tether and contractile rings completely disassembled with four resulting daughter nuclei, two, one copy of each original nucleus, residing in the two developing cell lobes divided by a quickly receding passageway. Shortly afterward the cytoplasmic contractile ring closes entirely and cytokinesis is complete.

Meiosis or Gamete Production

Meiosis, the process of creating the haploid cells destined to venture away as spores, starts off by performing the previously described mitosis. Though not an entirely necessary step from a minimalist point of view, after a cell is dictated to create haploid spores the act of performing mitosis then doubles the number of spores to be created. The dikaryotic daughter cells then merge their two haploid nuclei to create single diploid nuclei inside themselves. Inside the freshly formed diploid nucleus chromatids are formed, and nuclear exchange between pairs occur. After this the cells divide in more typical karyotic fashion with spindles at their north and south poles. However their nucleus remains intact during the division process, continuing to perform closed mitosis. Because of the chromatid duplication the resulting daughter cells are diploid, and the process of binary fission is executed once more as is typical during meiosis to finally yield four haploid cells each, totaling eight spores.

Fruiting Body Internal Structures

From a macroscopic glance the inner walls of the mostly hollow fruit body appears fuzzy and off-red in color. A closer look reveals a complex arrangement comprised of two types of tiny structures, both originating from red tissue and green tissue. The first structure, the tallest, is a fan shaped outcrop called a flabellum turris directly attached to the green tissue wall of the fruit body. These brittle towers line the inner wall like fingerprints, twisting around in labyrinthian manners. Along their top crest are narrow fragile shards. These tiny structures are the sporangium tissue of the green half of the doctor pickle crystal conglomeration.

The green sporangiums themselves are initially hollow, the cells that make up their very thin walls begin to go through the process of meiosis and give rise to thousands of spores inside them. These spores take in material as they develop and become comparatively large by the time that they mature and are capable of surviving on their own in the air. Once the spores within the sporangium are mature the structure is no longer hollow, it becomes quite full and ceases production at that point.

Below the flagellum turris growths, painting the channels between them, is a fuzzy film of red spores lightly stuck together. The basal stalks of the flagellum turris leach plasmids meant for identifying their body of origin into this sea, which promptly soaks them up in a silenced state. At the bottom of this sea of spores are the red tissue sporangiums. These soft structures, villi-like in appearance only, have their entire surface covered in cells performing meiosis. This continual stream of haploid cells feeds into the mass of spores above them. As the fruiting body matures the red sporangia dry up. The green sporangia atop their fan shaped homes begin to burst from the slightest disturbance. Soon the fruiting body breaks off from the crystal, either from wind or fauna brushing across it, this jostling is enough to shatter the bases of the flabellum turris and allow them to freely churn the spore layers inside the hollow orb. The spore cloud escapes through any tears, cracks, or breaks in the thin wall of the fruiting body as it moves and continues to churn.

Lifecycle

Simplified depiction of the reproductive cycle.

The method of reproduction for doctor pickle is comparable to other land based crystals, which is itself hardly departed from it's aquatic ancestry.

Spores are initially released from the fruiting body by various means. These spores are either red tissue haploid spores, or green tissue haploid spores. Due to the method in which the doctor pickle crystal produces these spores the green spores number far less and act as a population bottleneck. These initial haploid spores drift about in their environments through the air until they are able to land in a moist portion of soil, or a puddle of some nature. In their new environment they drift about until they come in contact with a haploid spore of their same tissue type originating from a different crystal, their difference in origin is determined by a surface compound essentially creating various mating types. The resulting cell is now considered a dikaryotic protospore, very reminiscent of their binucleid ancestors.

Upon the formation of the red protospore the plasmids that were released, by both parent crystals, activate and begin producing proteins that coat the surface of the cell. These proteins essentially act as a blood type, and can be referred to as such, and are a combination of both parental green tissue blood types. The green protospore also expresses these plasmids, having the same protein results. A red protospore and a green protospore that display the same blood type, or half of a blood type, cannot combine to form a spore modula. They must find a protospore counterpart with an entirely different blood type in order to properly combine to get to the next step of reproduction. Both protopores replicate, in the standard binucleid fashion of mitosis, spreading through an area until they find a potential protospore partner that meets all of their requirements. This results in a spore modula that has essentially four separate parents.

This spore modula, now surrounded by protospores competing for nutrients takes advantage of the combined abilities of its own two protospores to be able to replicate faster than its neighbors and dominate the given area. Pushing out genetically distinct protospores that failed to reach their next step the spore modula forms a fetal sheet. This sheet of cells is not a particularly standard step in the development of a crystal, but does happen to occur among doctor pickle crystals. The fetal sheet is a layer very rich in the heterotrophic red cells that make up a crystal, having yet differentiated and layered into more complex tissues. They house themselves in a mucus which provides a barrier between the actual colony and the outside world and also provides an extra cellular means of holding the colony together. Throughout the colony are the green tissue cells loosely connected to one another, they mainly act as a source of hormonal control stimulating the red cells to proliferate and establish the colony further.

Upon reaching a certain size threshold, the green tissue of the fetal sheet begin to change the growth pattern of the colony. They stimulate the red tissue to begin differentiating at a certain central point, and the green tissue itself begins to thicken and proliferate to surround that point. The green tissue begins forming the more recognizable facets of a crystal, albeit very tiny, while the red tissue inside begins forming the more recognizable tissue layers and organs. As this juvenile spike grows further the sheets of red cells that made up the fetal sheet become overtaken by the more complex differentiated red tissue from that central point and are pushed aside by juvenile roots tipped with green tissue root caps. The tiny juvenile spike resembles a more typical crystal, with the facets reaching from the base to the tip unbroken except along their verticals to create long strips of photosynthetic surfaces. Among doctor pickles these facets usually range 12 to 24 in number and seem to be influenced by blood type.

The manner in which a juvenile spike grows is comparable to the growth of a typical crystal. The the tip of the crystal growing in a vertical manner to increase the height of the organism, with tissue down the body of the crystal from the tip increasing in growth outward, and increased thickness of the structurally supportive layers of the green tissue plates along that same length. This outward growth and thickness of plate is most recognized at the base of the crystal, that area having existed the longest.

Once the juvenile spike reaches a height of about 15-20 cm it deviates from the growth habit of other crystals. Once having reached this height the green plates pinch away from the leading growth tip and become separate body parts. The growth tip repeats the process of growing upward and creating new plates, until that same height is achieved and they pinch off again. Along the edges of these plates the green tissue broadens to allow the transfer of pressure to continue the support of the organism. The red tissue beneath the green plates remains unsegmented, and along these breaks in the plates, where the broad contact edges exist, the majority of gas exchange occurs, reaching behind the plates and into the red tissue. The previous layer of photosynthetic facets continues to widen and increase the footprint of the crystal as it ages. This growth rate is greatest in the bottom handful of rows. The rows along the midsection of the crystal grow in a more uniform rate as the crystal matures, resulting in a shape that is less pyramidal and more cylindrical. A doctor pickle crystal, during a good growing season, is able to put on two or three of these rows before going dormant for the cold long winter.

After the formation of about three or four rows of photosynthetic plates the growing tip begins to change its behavior, elongating further and pinching the inner hollow chamber of the crystal. This pinched off section of hollow red tissue inside the growing tip is then triggered to differentiate and form the defensive organ of the doctor pickle. The tissue at the base of this organ then takes over the role of the growth tip. The new growth ring just beneath the mace horn creates a new row of plates that then continue on the standard growth of the crystal. The size of the mace horn remains fairly constant, the pieces of green tissue that make it up do not grow much at all.

Individuals that have been grown from root buds go through the same process, though skipping any fetal sheets or protospores and simply beginning at the juvenile Spike stage.

Winter Survival

Winter survival is achieved in a not particularly elegant combination of various methods. The cells of all the tissue exude their water into the extracellular space so as not to burst as the water freezes. They then also fill themselves with and the intracellular spaces with sugar and proteins that bind water. This prevents the water from crystallizing even at very low temperatures.