Multi-gene analysis of Symbiodinium dinoflagellates: a perspective on rarity, symbiosis, and evolution.

ABSTRACT: Symbiodinium, a large group of dinoflagellates, live in symbiosis with marine protists, invertebrate metazoans, and free-living in the environment. Symbiodinium are functionally variable and play critical energetic roles in symbiosis. Our knowledge of Symbiodinium has been historically constrained by the limited number of molecular markers available to study evolution in the genus. Here we compare six functional genes, representing three cellular compartments, in the nine known Symbiodinium lineages. Despite striking similarities among the single gene phylogenies from distinct organelles, none were evolutionarily identical. A fully concatenated reconstruction, however, yielded a well-resolved topology identical to the current benchmark nr28S gene. Evolutionary rates differed among cellular

SUBMITTER: Pochon X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4034598 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature