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Genome analysis and its significance in four unicellular algae, Cyanidioshyzon merolae, Ostreococcus tauri, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and Thalassiosira pseudonana

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An Erratum to this article was published on 05 March 2008

Abstract

Algae play a more important role than land plants in the maintenance of the global environment and productivity. Progress in genome analyses of these organisms means that we can now obtain information on algal genomes, global annotation and gene expression. The full genome information for several algae has already been analyzed. Whole genomes of the red alga Cyanidioshyzon merolae, the green algae Ostreococcus tauri and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana have been sequenced. Genome composition and the features of cells among the four algae were compared. Each alga maintains basic genes as photosynthetic eukaryotes and possesses additional gene groups to represent their particular characteristics. This review discusses and introduces the latest research that makes the best use of the particular features of each organism and the significance of genome analysis to study biological phenomena. In particular, examples of post-genome studies of organelle multiplication in C. merolae based on analyzed genome information are presented.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research A (No. 19207004 to TK), and by grants from Frontier Project “Adaptation and Evolution of Extremophile” (to TK) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, and from the Program for the Promotion of Basic Research Activities for Innovative Biosciences (PROBRAIN to TK).

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Correspondence to Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa.

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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10265-008-0154-z

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Misumi, O., Yoshida, Y., Nishida, K. et al. Genome analysis and its significance in four unicellular algae, Cyanidioshyzon merolae, Ostreococcus tauri, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and Thalassiosira pseudonana . J Plant Res 121, 3–17 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-007-0133-9

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