2003/09/01 by Sven Janson, Edna Granéli · 2 citations
Environmental Science · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology #Protist diversity and phylogeny #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
paper · doi:10.2216/i0031-8884-42-5-473.1
openalex publication_date 2003/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Among all organisms, the dinoflagellates display the highest diversity in their plastids, indicating multiple plastid origins from a broad variety of algae by replacing the common peridinin-containing plastid. One such replacement seems to have taken place in the genus Dinophysis, where the plastids show characteristics of a cryptomonad. Natural populations of D. acuminata. D. acuta and D. norvegica were collected from the Baltic Sea, North Sea and northern Atlantic Ocean. We sequenced a 430 bp fragment of the psbA gene from 16 thoroughly washed single cells of three Dinophysis species from different regions to monitor the variation between species and regions. There was no sequence variation between species or regions, indicating either slow evolution or the highly specific engulfment of a narrow range of cryptomonad species. A larger region (799 bp) of the psbA gene was sequenced from D. norvegica cells and four cryptomonads to determine the phylogenetic position of the plastid sequence. In the resulting phylogeny the psbA sequence of D. norvegica appeared as a sister to those from Chroomonas sp. M1312, Cryptomonas sp. M1094 and Rhodomonas sp. KAC 30 with Guillardia theta as the most ancestral sequence.