title: Chloroplast-mitochondria cross-talk in diatoms.
abstract: Diatoms are unicellular, mainly photosynthetic, eukaryotes living within elaborate silicified cell walls and believed to be responsible for around 40% of global primary productivity in the oceans. Their abundance in aquatic ecosystems is such that they have on different occasions been described as the insects, the weeds, or the cancer cells of the ocean. In contrast to higher plants and green algae which derive from a primary endosymbiosis, diatoms are now believed to originate from a serial secondary endosymbiosis involving both green and red algae and a heterotrophic exosymbiont host. As a consequence of their dynamic evolutionary history, they appear to have red algal-derived chloroplasts empowered largely by green algal proteins, working alongside mitochondria derived from the non-photosynthetic exosymbiont. This review will discuss the evidence for such an unusual assemblage of organelles in diatoms, and will present the evidence implying that it has enabled them with unorthodox metabolisms that may have contributed to their profound ecological success.
authors.affiliation: Environmental and Evolutionary Genomics Section, Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS), CNRS UMR 8197 INSERM U1024, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 46 rue d'Ulm, 75230 Paris Cedex 05, France.
authors.forename: Judit
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Prihoda
authors.forename: Atsuko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Wilson B M
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: de Paula
authors.forename: John F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.forename: Leïla
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tirichine
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bowler
mesh_terms: D002736:Chloroplasts / Q000378:metabolism*; D017377:Diatoms / Q000378:metabolism*; D008928:Mitochondria / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology*