Oral Structure in the Rare Protistan Biosphere
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NEXT GENERATION SEQUENCING OF PROTISTS IN THE OILSANDS OF ALBERTA (CANADA) Maria Aguilar1, Camilla Nesbo2,3, Julia Foght2, David Bass4 and Joel B. Dacks1,4 1. Department of Cell Biology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada 3. CEES, Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway 4. Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK The Athabasca oil sands are one of the biggest oil deposits in the world. They consist on a mixture of sand, water and very dense petroleum technically known as bitumen. Bitumen extraction is a complex process that involves the addition of hot water and chemicals. As result, huge volumes of sludge containing byproducts of the extraction are produced and stored in artificial reservoirs called the tailings ponds. An adequate understanding of the biological components of this environment is essential for successful management and future land reclamation plans. Although there is evidence of the ability of bacteria to process hydrocarbon derivates in the tailings ponds, very little is known about the community of eukaryotic microorganisms living there. We have carried out a first assessment of eukaryotic organisms in the tailings ponds with next generation sequencing technologies. A comparative analysis of previously existing metagenomes has confirmed the presence of eukaryotic DNA in this environment. However, Bacteria and Archaea are clearly dominating the ecosystem and masking the diversity of protists. A more detailed study based on amplicon libraries of the V4 region of the small subunit of the ribosomal DNA has made it possible to detect the presence of a varied community of organisms in this extreme environment, including representatives of most eukaryotic supergroups. A RECENTLY FORMED SPECIES FLOCK CONTAINS BOTH MARINE AND FRESHWATER DINOFLAGELLATES Nataliia V. Annenkova1, Gert Hansen2, Øjvind Moestrup2, Dag Ahrén1, Karin Rengefors1 1. Aquatic Ecology, Department of Biology, Lund University, Ecology Building, 22362 Lund, Sweden 2. Marine Biological Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 4, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark The process of rapid radiation has been much less studied in protists than among multicellular organisms. We present the first clear example of recent rapid diversification followed by dispersion to environments with different ecological conditions within free-living microeukaryotes. This is a lineage of cold-water dinoflagellates consisting of the marine-brackish Scrippsiella hangoei, S. aff. hangoei and several freshwater species. The limnic species include Peridinium euryceps and Peridinium baicalense, which are restricted to a few lakes, in particular to the ancient and deepest Lake Baikal, and the cosmopolitan Peridinium aciculiferum. All of them have relatively large morphological differences. However, while SSU rDNA fragments are identical they have distinct but very small differences in the DNA markers (LSU rDNA, ITS-2, COB gene). Our example stands in stark contrast to known examples of closely related protists, in which genetic difference is typically larger than morphological differences. Since some of the species co-occur, and all have small but species-specific sequence differences, we suggest that the differences are not due to phenotypic plasticity. To better understand how these species have diversified we analyzed the transcriptomes from freshwater P. aciculiferum, S. hangoei from Baltic Sea and S. aff. hangoei from Antarctic saline lake. Phylogenetic analysis of 792 gene orthologs allowed us to resolve the relations among the three dinoflagellates. Our data support the idea of the important role of saline barrier for protist diversification. Further genomic studies of this species flock will help us understand what genetic changes and which processes have led to the different phenotypes. COMPARATIVE GENOMICS AND PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF SYNTAXIN 17 Lael D. Barlow1 and Joel B. Dacks1 1. Department of Cell Biology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H7, Canada Compared to endosymbiotic organelles, the origin of autogenous organelles is obscure. However, it has been mechanistically linked to evolution of protein families acting in the membrane trafficking system, which mediates exchange of material among autogenous organelles. Soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptors (SNAREs) constitute a superfamily of proteins involved in fusion of membranes in the membrane trafficking system. SNAREs are essential for fusion in vesicle transport, and for fusion of larger compartments such as endosomes and lysosomes. Formation of organelle-specific complexes composed of SNAREs from different SNARE families on opposing membranes catalyzes fusion. SNAREs have been classified into four families: Qa-, Qb-, Qc-, and R-SNAREs. Previous studies revealed that the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) possessed an unexpectedly complex set of SNARE subfamilies, with, at least five within the Qa-SNARE family. The present study investigates the Qa-SNARE Syntaxin 17 (Syn17). Functional studies in metazoan cells have implicated Syn17 in membrane fusion at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and fusion of autophagosomes with lysosomes. Because of the role of Syn17 in autophagy, which is common to all eukaryotes, we hypothesized that Syn17 exists in eukaryotes other than the Metazoa. Homology searching revealed several potential Syn17 homologs in distantly related organisms, including Bigelowiella natans, and Naegleria gruberi. Orthology of putative Syn17 sequences is supported by phylogenetic analysis, suggesting that Syn17 represents a sixth Qa-SNARE subfamily that was present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). This may be important for reconstructing the early evolution of autogenous organelles, including the ER and autophagosome. CHLOROPLAST GENOMES OF THE EUGLENACEAE Matthew S. Bennett1 and Richard E. Triemer1 1. Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University Euglenophytes obtained their chloroplast from (a) secondary endosymbiotic event(s) involving a heterotrophic euglenid and a prasinophyte green alga. Over the last few years, multiple studies have been published outlining chloroplast genomes which represent many of the photosynthetic euglenid genera. However, these genomes were scattered throughout the euglenophyte phylogenetic tree, and these studies were focused on the overall chloroplast evolution within the Euglenophyta. Recent phylogenetic analyses, based on both ribosomal and nuclear genes, have determined that the order Euglenales should be further broken down into two families, the Euglenaceae and the Phacaeae. In addition to the genetic evidence, these families share synapomorphic chloroplast characteristics which may help determine chloroplast evolution within the Euglenophyta. Here, we present a study exclusively on taxa within the Euglenaceae. Six new chloroplast genomes were characterized, and were added to the six that have been previously published in order to determine how the chloroplasts evolved within this family. Overall at least one genome has now been characterized for each genus, and we have characterized the genomes of different strains from two taxa to explore intra-species variability. Results indicate that while these genomes do demonstrate a large amount of variability between them, there are common characteristics that are not shared with the chloroplast genomes of the Eutreptiales, the basal most group of photosynthetic euglenids. PHYLOGENOMIC PLACEMENT OF THE ORPHANED AMORPHEAN PROTISTS: ANCYROMONADS, MANTAMONADS, COLLODICTYONIDS, AND RIGIFILIDS Matthew W. Brown1,2, Aaron A. Heiss3, Ryoma Kamikawa4, Akinori Yabuki5, Takashi Shiratori6, Ken-ichiro Ishida6, Yuji Inagaki7, Alastair G.B. Simpson8, Andrew J. Roger9 1. Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University 2. Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing & Biotechnology, Mississippi State University 3. Department of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History 4. Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies and Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University 5. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) 6. Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba 7. Center for Computational Sciences and Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba 8. Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University 9. Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University In most cases phylogenetics clearly places most eukaryotic lineages neatly into one of the several eukaryotic supergroups. However, there are still several orphan lineages that elude clear supergroup affiliations. Some of the greatest holdouts include flagellates such as the ancyromonads, mantamonads, and collodictyonids. Previous works have variously proposed that they are somehow related to the Amoebozoa or Obazoa (i.e., Opisthokonta, Breviatea, and Apusomonadida). They have further been placed into the recently proposed ‘megagroup’ Amorphea. Although there is some transcriptomic sampling of the collodictyonids, their placement is not robust in phylogenomic reconstructions and the rest of these taxa are severely undersampled. Here we provide both 1) an extensive taxon