Analysis of horizontal genetic transfer in red algae in the post-genomics age.
The recently published genome of the unicellular red algaPorphyridium purpureumrevealed a gene-rich, intron-poor species, which is surprising for a free-living mesophile. Of the 8,355 predicted protein-coding regions, up to 773 (9.3%) were implicated in horizontal genetic transfer (HGT) events involving other prokaryote and eukaryote lineages. A much smaller number, up to 174 (2.1%) showed unambiguous evidence of vertical inheritance. Together with other red algal genomes, nearly all published in 2013, these data provide an excellent platform for studying diverse aspects of algal biology and evolution. This novel information will help investigators test existing hypotheses about the impact of endosymbiosis and HGT on algal evolution and enable comparative analysis within a more-refined, hypothesis-driven framework that extends beyond HGT. Here we explore the impacts of this infusion of red algal genome data on addressing questions regarding the complex nature of algal evolution and highlight the need for scalable phylogenomic approaches to handle the forthcoming deluge of sequence information.
Institute for Molecular Bioscience, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics; The University of Queensland; Brisbane, QLD Australia.
Cheong Xin
CX
Chan
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources, and Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences; Rutgers University; New Brunswick, NJ USA.
Debashish
D
Bhattacharya
algal evolution; endosymbiosis; horizontal genetic transfer; phylogenomics; red algae