J. Phycol. 47, S1–S98 (2011) Ó 2011 Phycological Society of America DOI: 10.1111/j.1529-8817.2011.01050.x ABSTRACTS SYMPOSIA TALKS studying marine picoeukaryotes and resulting insights on their evolution, diversity and physiology will be discussed. THE EVOLUTION OF PROTISTS AND THEIR ORGANELLES: NEW INSIGHTS FROM THE FRONTIERS OF GENOMICS ECOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF NITROGEN- Roger, Andrew FIXING CYANOBACTERIA ILLUMINATED BY Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary GENOMICS AND METAGENOMICS Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Zehr, J. P. Biology, Dalhousie University University of California, Santa Cruz, USA,
[email protected] The availability of inexpensive genome and tran- Tripp, H. J. scriptome sequencing capacity has furnished insights University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, into the biology, biochemistry, evolutionary relation-
[email protected] ships and dynamics of protistan genomes at an Hilton, J. unprecedented rate. From these data, large concate- University of California, Santa Cruz, USA, nated data sets of conserved protein genes have been
[email protected] assembled and phylogenomic analyses are converging Moisander, P. H., University of Massachusetts, USA, to a stable picture of the inter-relationships of the
[email protected] major eukaryotic super-groups. At the same time, Foster, R., Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, comparative assessments of gene contents of diverse Germany,
[email protected] microbial eukaryote genomes are allowing us to tease apart the relative impact of primary and secondary Nitrogen is a key nutrient limiting the productivity endosymbiotic organelle-based gene transfer versus of the oceans. Nitrogen fixation is an important lateral gene transfer in shaping the biochemical prop- source of nitrogen to the surface waters of oligo- erties of these organisms and their subcellular com- trophic oceans and was believed to be primarily due partments.