Projects & Grants
| Genome and transcriptome of Hemistasia phaeocysticola, representative of a novel hyper-diverse clade of marine protists | |
|---|---|
| Project Id | SGS26/PřF/2016 |
| Main solver | M.Sc. Pavel Flegontov, Ph.D. |
| Period | 1/2016 - 12/2016 |
| Provider | Specifický VŠ výzkum |
| State | finished |
| Anotation | Diplonemids (Diplonemea, Euglenozoa) were considered an obscure group of marine protists until very recently, when the results of the Tara expedition revealed that they represent the 6th most abundant group in marine planktonic ecosystems, and are ranked the 3rd by their sequence diversity (after dinoflagellates and metazoans). Moreover, diplonemids are a sister group of kinetoplastids, flagellates which include medically and veterinary important Leishmania and Trypanosoma spp and many other parasitic species. Therefore, the study of this overlooked group of organisms is of high relevance, not only due to their abundance and diversity in the World Ocean, but also due to its implications for unraveling the evolution of parasitism in Euglenozoa. So far there is no genome published for diplonemids. Hemistasia phaeocysticola, a marine diplonemid that was recently isolated in Japan, is now available in an axenic culture in our lab. The project aims at H. phaeocysticola genome and transcriptome sequencing followed by assembly, manually curated annotation and detailed characterization of its gene content and metabolism. |
