Diversification of light capture ability was accompanied by the evolution of phycobiliproteins in cryptophyte algae.

ABSTRACT: Evolutionary biologists have long sought to identify phenotypic traits whose evolution enhances an organism's performance in its environment. Diversification of traits related to resource acquisition can occur owing to spatial or temporal resource heterogeneity. We examined the ability to capture light in the Cryptophyta, a phylum of single-celled eukaryotic algae with diverse photosynthetic pigments, to better understand how acquisition of an abiotic resource may be associated with diversification. Cryptophytes originated through secondary endosymbiosis between an unknown eukaryotic host and a red algal symbiont. This merger resulted in distinctive pigment-protein complexes, the cryptophyte phycobiliproteins, which are the products of genes from both ancestors. These novel complexes may h

SUBMITTER: Greenwold MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6532512 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature