Linkage mapping identifies the sex determining region as a single locus in the Pennate diatom Seminavis robusta

What Was Old Is New Again: The Pennate Diatom Haslea ostrearia (Gaillon) Simonsen in the Multi-Omic Age

The marine pennate diatom Haslea ostrearia has long been known for its characteristic blue pigment marennine, which is responsible for the greening of invertebrate gills, a natural phenomenon of great importance for the oyster industry. For two centuries, this taxon was considered unique; however, the recent description of a new blue Haslea species revealed unsuspected biodiversity. Marennine-like pigments are natural blue dyes that display various biological activities—e.g., antibacterial, antioxidant and antiproliferative—with a great potential for applications in the food, feed, cosmetic and health industries. Regarding fundamental prospects, researchers use model organisms as standards to study cellular and physiological processes in other organisms, and there is a growing and crucial need for more, new and unconventional model organisms to better correspond to the diversity of the tree of life. The present work, thus, advocates for establishing H. ostrearia as a new model organism by presenting its pros and cons—i.e., the interesting aspects of this peculiar diatom (representative of benthic-epiphytic phytoplankton, with original behavior and chemodiversity, controlled sexual reproduction, fundamental and applied-oriented importance, reference genome, and transcriptome will soon be available); it will also present the difficulties encountered before this becomes a reality as it is for other diatom models (the genetics of the species in its infancy, the transformation feasibility to be explored, the routine methods needed to cryopreserve strains of interest).

Pheromone Mediated Sexual Reproduction of Pennate Diatom Cylindrotheca closterium

Benthic diatoms dominate primary production in marine subtidal and intertidal environments. Their extraordinary species diversity and ecological success is thought to be linked with their predominantly heterothallic sexual reproduction. Little is known about pheromone involvement during mating of pennate diatoms. Here we describe pheromone guided mating in the coastal raphid diatom Cylindrotheca closterium. We show that the two mating types (mt⁺ and mt⁻) have distinct functions. Similar to other benthic diatoms, mt⁺ cells are searching for the mt⁻ cells to pair. To enhance mating efficiency mt⁻ exudes an attraction pheromone which we proved by establishing a novel capillary assay. Further, two more pheromones produced by mt⁻ promote the sexual events. One arrests the cell cycle progression of mt⁺ while the other induces gametogenesis of mt⁺. We suggest that C. closterium shares a functionally similar pheromone system with other pennate diatoms like Seminavis robusta and Pseudostaurosira trainorii which synchronize sexual events and mate attraction. Remarkably, we found no evidence of mt⁺ producing pheromones, which differentiates C. closterium from other pennates and suggests a less complex pheromone system in C. closterium.

The brown clock: circadian rhythms in stramenopiles

Circadian clocks allow organisms to anticipate environmental changes associated with the diurnal light/dark cycle. Circadian oscillators have been described in plants and green algae, cyanobacteria, animals and fungi, however, little is known about the circadian clocks of photosynthetic eukaryotes outside the green lineage. Stramenopiles are a diverse group of secondary endosymbionts whose plastid originated from a red alga. Photosynthetic stramenopiles, which include diatoms and brown algae, play key roles in biogeochemical cycles and are important components of marine ecosystems. Genome annotation efforts indicated the presence of a novel type of oscillator in these organisms and the first circadian clock component in a stramenopile has been recently discovered. This review summarizes the phenotypic characterization of circadian rhythms in stramenopiles and current efforts to determine the mechanisms of this 'brown clock'. The elucidation of this brown clock will enable a deeper understanding of the role of self-sustained oscillations in the adaptation to life in marine environments.

Algal Sex Determination and the Evolution of Anisogamy

Algae are photosynthetic eukaryotes whose taxonomic breadth covers a range of life histories, degrees of cellular and developmental complexity, and diverse patterns of sexual reproduction. These patterns include haploid- and diploid-phase sex determination, isogamous mating systems, and dimorphic sexes. Despite the ubiquity of sexual reproduction in algae, their mating-type-determination and sex-determination mechanisms have been investigated in only a limited number of representatives. These include volvocine green algae, where sexual cycles and sex-determining mechanisms have shed light on the transition from mating types to sexes, and brown algae, which are a model for UV sex chromosome evolution in the context of a complex haplodiplontic life cycle. Recent advances in genomics have aided progress in understanding sexual cycles in less-studied taxa including ulvophyte, charophyte, and prasinophyte green algae, as well as in diatoms.

MRP3 is a sex determining gene in the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata

A broad diversity of sex-determining systems has evolved in eukaryotes. However, information on the mechanisms of sex determination for unicellular microalgae is limited, including for diatoms, key-players of ocean food webs. Here we report the identification of a mating type (MT) determining gene for the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata. By comparing the expression profile of the two MTs, we find five MT-biased genes, of which one, MRP3, is expressed exclusively in MT+ strains in a monoallelic manner. A short tandem repeat of specific length in the region upstream of MRP3 is consistently present in MT+ and absent in MT- strains. MRP3 overexpression in an MT- strain induces sex reversal: the transgenic MT- can mate with another MT- strain and displays altered regulation of the other MT-biased genes, indicating that they lie downstream. Our data show that a relatively simple genetic program is involved in defining the MT in P. multistriata.

Intraspecific chemical communication in microalgae

Contents 516 I. 516 II. 518 III. 518 IV. 521 V. 523 VI. 523 VII. 526 526 References 526 SUMMARY: The relevance of infochemicals in the relationships between organisms is emerging as a fundamental aspect of aquatic ecology. Exchanges of chemical cues are likely to occur not only between organisms of different species, but also between conspecific individuals. Especially intriguing is the investigation of chemical communication in microalgae, because of the relevance of these organisms for global primary production and their key role in trophic webs. Intraspecific communication between algae has been investigated mostly in relation to sexuality and mating. The literature also contains information on other types of intraspecific chemical communication that have not always been explicitly tagged as ways to communicate to conspecifics. However, the proposed role of certain compounds as intraspecific infochemicals appears questionable. In this article, we make use of this plethora of information to describe the various instances of intraspecific chemical communication between conspecific microalgae and to identify the common traits and ecological significance of intraspecific communication. We also discuss the evolutionary implications of intraspecific chemical communication and the mechanisms by which it can be inherited. A special focus is the genetic diversity among conspecific algae, including the possibility that genetic diversity is an absolute requirement for intraspecific chemical communication.

Identification of the meiotic toolkit in diatoms and exploration of meiosis-specific SPO11 and RAD51 homologs in the sexual species Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata and Seminavis robusta

BACKGROUND

Sexual reproduction is an obligate phase in the life cycle of most eukaryotes. Meiosis varies among organisms, which is reflected by the variability of the gene set associated to the process. Diatoms are unicellular organisms that belong to the stramenopile clade and have unique life cycles that can include a sexual phase.

RESULTS

The exploration of five diatom genomes and one diatom transcriptome led to the identification of 42 genes potentially involved in meiosis. While these include the majority of known meiosis-related genes, several meiosis-specific genes, including DMC1, could not be identified. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses supported gene identification and revealed ancestral loss and recent expansion in the RAD51 family in diatoms. The two sexual species Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata and Seminavis robusta were used to explore the expression of meiosis-related genes: RAD21, SPO11-2, RAD51-A, RAD51-B and RAD51-C were upregulated during meiosis, whereas other paralogs in these families showed no differential expression patterns, suggesting that they may play a role during vegetative divisions. An almost identical toolkit is shared among Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries and Fragilariopsis cylindrus, as well as two species for which sex has not been observed, Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Thalassiosira pseudonana, suggesting that these two may retain a facultative sexual phase.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results reveal the conserved meiotic toolkit in six diatom species and indicate that Stramenopiles share major modifications of canonical meiosis processes ancestral to eukaryotes, with important divergences in each Kingdom.

Establishment of Genetic Transformation in the Sexually Reproducing Diatoms Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata and Pseudo-nitzschia arenysensis and Inheritance of the Transgene

We report the genetic transformation of the planktonic diatoms Pseudo-nitzschia arenysensis and Pseudo-nitzschia multistriata, members of the widely distributed and ecologically important genus Pseudo-nitzschia. P. arenysensis and P. multistriata present the classical size reduction/restitution life cycle and can reproduce sexually. Genetic transformation was achieved with the biolistic method, using the H4 gene promoter from P. multistriata to drive expression of exogenous genes. The transformation was first optimized introducing the Sh ble gene to confer resistance to the antibiotic zeocin. Integration of the transgene was confirmed by PCR and Southern blot analyses. Subsequently, we simultaneously transformed in P. arenysensis two plasmids, one encoding the β-glucuronidase (GUS) gene together with the plasmid carrying the Sh ble resistance gene, demonstrating the possibility of co-transformation. By transforming a gene encoding a fusion between the histone H4 and the green fluorescent protein (GFP), we demonstrated that fluorescent tagging is possible and that studies for protein localization are feasible. Importantly, we crossed P. arenysensis- and P. multistriata-transformed strains with a wild-type strain of opposite mating type and demonstrated that the transgene can be inherited in the F1 generation. The possibility to transform two diatom species for which genetic crosses are possible opens the way to a number of new approaches, including classical loss of function screens and the possibility to obtain different combinations of double transformants.

Pheromone signaling during sexual reproduction in algae

Algae are found in all aquatic and many terrestrial habitats. They are dominant in phytoplankton and biofilms thereby contributing massively to global primary production. Since algae comprise photosynthetic representatives of the various protoctist groups their physiology and appearance is highly diverse. This diversity is also mirrored in their characteristic life cycles that exhibit various facets of ploidy and duration of the asexual phase as well as gamete morphology. Nevertheless, sexual reproduction in unicellular and colonial algae usually has as common motive that two specialized, sexually compatible haploid gametes establish physical contact and fuse. To guarantee mating success, processes during sexual reproduction are highly synchronized and regulated. This review focuses on sex pheromones of algae that play a key role in these processes. Especially, the diversity of sexual strategies as well as of the compounds involved are the focus of this contribution. Discoveries connected to algal pheromone chemistry shed light on the role of key evolutionary processes, including endosymbiotic events and lateral gene transfer, speciation and adaptation at all phylogenetic levels. But progress in this field might also in the future provide valid tools for the manipulation of aquaculture and environmental processes.

Origins of eukaryotic sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction is a nearly universal feature of eukaryotic organisms. Given its ubiquity and shared core features, sex is thought to have arisen once in the last common ancestor to all eukaryotes. Using the perspectives of molecular genetics and cell biology, we consider documented and hypothetical scenarios for the instantiation and evolution of meiosis, fertilization, sex determination, uniparental inheritance of organelle genomes, and speciation.