5 The origin of the dinoflagellate plastid (original) (raw)

2003, Journal of Phycology

The peridinin pigmented dinoflagellate chloroplasts are the result of a secondary endosymbiotic event between a photosynthetic eukaryote and a dinoflagellate. Dinoflagellate chloroplast and nuclear evolution were independent before this endosymbiotic event. To reconstruct the evolution of the dinoflagellate chloroplast, phylogenies were constructed with a chloroplast gene psbB. The gene phylogeny should reflect the evolution of the chloroplast and indicate the plastid donor lineage. Gene sequences derived from the dinoflagellate chloroplast were extremely divergent but suggested that the plastid donor could have been a haptophyte. In an attempt to find better genes for analysis and to further understand gene transfer about 4900 randomly selected expressed genes were sequenced from two dinoflagellates, Lingulodinium polyedra and Amphidinium carterae. From these genes, thirty typically plastid-encoded  Copyright by Tsvetan Radoslavov Bachvaroff 2004 ii ACKNOWLEGEMENTS The author would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to this document. Torstein Tengs taught me valuable laboratory techniques and performed many sequencing reactions on my behalf. He also made substantial intellectual contributions to my understanding of plastid evolution. Dr. David Oldach of the Institute for Human Virology generously loaned equipment and provided encouragement. Professor Robert Rowan of the University of Guam challenged me to find better data. The psbB sequences from haptophytes were obtained from Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi in Professor Jakobsen's lab at the University of Oslo, Norway. Kamran also contributed to my understanding of dinoflagellate nuclear phylogeny by generously sharing unpublished data. Three talented undergraduates participated in the EST data collection, Ernest Williams, Gregory Concepcion, and Carolyn Rogers. Greg also contributed substantially to the dinoflagellate EST database. A fourth undergraduate, Ali Tabatabai, worked on a dinoflagellate rubisco project not presented here. Finally, I would like to thank Maria Virginia Sanchez Puerta who has read and commented on many subunits of this document, and who has sequenced the organellar genomes of Emiliania.

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