The Chlamydomonas Genome Reveals the Evolution of Key Animal and Plant Functions

Authors

• Sabeeha S. Merchant, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
• Simon E. Prochnik, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Olivier Vallon, CNRS, Université Paris 6, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, 75005 Paris, France
• Elizabeth H. Harris, Duke University, Durham, NC
• Steven J. Karpowicz, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
• George B. Witman, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA
• Astrid Terry, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Asaf Salamov, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Lillian K. Fritz-Laylin, University of California at BerkeleyFollow
• Laurence Maréchal-Drouard, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes, CNRS, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France
• Wallace F. Marshall, University of California at San FranciscoFollow
• Liang-Hu Qu, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou 510275, China
• David R. Nelson, University of Tennessee, Memphis, TN
• Anton A. Sanderfoot, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
• Martin H. Spalding, Iowa State University, Ames, IA
• Vladimir V. Kapitonov, Genetic Information Research Institute, Mountain View, CA
• Qinghu Ren, The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, MD
• Patrick Ferris, Plant Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA
• Erika Lindquist, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Harris Shapiro, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Susan M. Lucas, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Jane Grimwood, Stanford Human Genome Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA
• Jeremy Schmutz, Stanford Human Genome Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA
• Igor V. Grigoriev, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Daniel S. Rokhsar, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI)
• Arthur Grossman, Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, CA 94306, USA
• Chlamydomonas Annotation Team
• JGI Annotation Team
• Heriberto D. Cerutti, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

10-12-2007

Comments

Published in SCIENCE VOL 318 12 OCTOBER 2007. Copyright 2007. Used by permission. www.sciencemag.org

Abstract

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga whose lineage diverged from land plants over 1 billion years ago. It is a model system for studying chloroplast-based photosynthesis, as well as the structure, assembly, and function of eukaryotic flagella (cilia), which were inherited from the common ancestor of plants and animals, but lost in land plants. We sequenced the ~120-megabase nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas and performed comparative phylogenomic analyses, identifying genes encoding uncharacterized proteins that are likely associated with the function and biogenesis of chloroplasts or eukaryotic flagella. Analyses of the Chlamydomonas genome advance our understanding of the ancestral eukaryotic cell, reveal previously unknown genes associated with photosynthetic and flagellar functions, and establish links between ciliopathy and the composition and function of flagella.