bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.28.176636; this version posted June 29, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Detection of Horizontal Gene Transfer in the Genome of the Choanoflagellate Salpingoeca 2 rosetta 3 4 Danielle M. Matriano1, Rosanna A. Alegado2, and Cecilia Conaco1 5 6 1 Marine Science Institute, University of the Philippines, Diliman 7 2 Department of Oceanography, Hawaiʻi Sea Grant, Daniel K. Inouye Center for Microbial 8 Oceanography: Research and Education, University of Hawai`i at Manoa 9 10 Corresponding author: 11 Cecilia Conaco,
[email protected] 12 13 Author email addresses: 14 Danielle M. Matriano,
[email protected] 15 Rosanna A. Alegado,
[email protected] 16 Cecilia Conaco,
[email protected] 17 18 19 20 21 22 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.28.176636; this version posted June 29, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 23 Abstract 24 25 Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the movement of heritable materials between distantly related 26 organisms, is crucial in eukaryotic evolution. However, the scale of HGT in choanoflagellates, the 27 closest unicellular relatives of metazoans, and its possible roles in the evolution of animal 28 multicellularity remains unexplored.