Comparative Genomic and Transcriptomic Characterization of the Toxigenic Marine Dinoflagellate Alexandrium ostenfeldii

摘要: Many dinoflagellate species are notorious for the toxins they produce and ecological human health consequences associated with harmful algal blooms (HABs). Dinoflagellates particularly refractory to genomic analysis due enormous genome size, lack of knowledge about their DNA composition structure, peculiarities gene regulation, such as spliced leader (SL) trans-splicing mRNA transposition mechanisms. Alexandrium ostenfeldii is known macrocyclic imine toxins, described spirolides. We characterized A. using a combination transcriptomic data random clones comparison other dinoflagellates, species. Examination SL sequences revealed similar features in including decay indicate frequent retro-transposition This probably contributes overall complexity by generating additional copies. Sequencing several thousand fosmid bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) ends yielded wealth simple repeats tandemly repeated longer sequence stretches which we estimated comprise more than half whole genome. Surprisingly, very limited set 79–97 bp sequences; part thus relatively uniform space interrupted coding sequences. Our survey (GSS) represents largest date. typical respect its transcriptome but demonstrates Alexandrium-like stop codon usage. The large portion repetitive organization within agreement studies on dinoflagellates different approaches. It remains be determined whether this unusual directly correlated exceptionally low amount histones histone-like proteins.