Comparative Genomics of a Bacterivorous Green Alga Reveals Evolutionary Causalities and Consequences of Phago-Mixotrophic Mode of Nutrition.

ABSTRACT: Cymbomonas tetramitiformis-a marine prasinophyte-is one of only a few green algae that still retain an ancestral particulate-feeding mechanism while harvesting energy through photosynthesis. The genome of the alga is estimated to be 850 Mb-1.2 Gb in size-the bulk of which is filled with repetitive sequences-and is annotated with 37,366 protein-coding gene models. A number of unusual metabolic pathways (for the Chloroplastida) are predicted for C. tetramitiformis, including pathways for Lipid-A and peptidoglycan metabolism. Comparative analyses of the predicted peptides of C. tetramitiformis to sets of other eukaryotes revealed that nonphagocytes are depleted in a number of genes, a proportion of which have known function in feeding. In addition, our analysis suggests that obligatory phagot

SUBMITTER: Burns JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5741210 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature