library_construction_protocol: Algal cultures were harvested for RNA extraction by centrifugation at 4000 rpm for 5 min at 18°C. RNA was extracted using the Isolate II RNA mini kit (Meridian Bioscience, London, UK) according to manufacturer instructions. Cells were ruptured in RLT buffer containing 1% β-mercapto-ethanol by bead beating for 5 min at 30 mHz. RNA was then treated with 3 µl Turbo DNAse (ThermoFisher, Waltham, USA) in a 50 µl reaction volume, followed by a cleaning step using RNA Clean & ConcentratorTM-5 kit (Zymo Research, Irvine, CA, USA) according to manufacturer instructions. RNA was used for generating transcriptomic data and qPCR analysis. MARS-seq2.0 (Keren-Shaul H, Kenigsberg E, Jaitin DA, et al. MARS-seq2.0: an experimental and analytical pipeline for indexed sorting combined with single-cell RNA sequencing. Nat Protoc. 2019;14(6):1841-1862. doi:10.1038/s41596-019-0164-4)