Introduction

The objective of the IEA “Green Voyage: Genome evolution in the green lineage” coordinated by Dr. Gwenael Piganeau (CNRS,  Biologie intégrative des organismes marins UMR7232) in collaboration with Assistant Professor Adriana Lopes (Asian School of Environment, Nanyang Technological University) is to  improve  the  understanding  of  the  evolution  of genome architectures, gene content, and metabolic capacities across unicellular green algae. The IEA “Green Voyage” is built on the genomic data to be generated through the CSP – JGI project New Green Genes (https://jgi.doe.gov/csp-2021-new-green-genes/), coordinated by Singapore partner. Through this collaboration, we aim to provide ground breaking insights into the genetics and biology of important but yet under-explored photosynthetic eukaryotic groups.

Missions and research themes

Genomics research on unicellular green algae (Chlorophyta) is far from having reached its full potential and there is currently a significant bias in sequenced representatives that hampers our understanding of their diversity as well as their role in the environment.  Despite thousands of described species (6878 catalogued in AlgaeBase) from 13 different lineages, only 89 Chlorophyta nuclear genomes are available in GenBank.  Of these, more than 80% are restricted to two groups of organisms that either serve as model systems (e.g. Chlamydomonas  reinhardtii) or are considered of economic importance (e.g. Chlorella and Nannochloris). We propose to fill the gap in the Chlorophyta tree by selecting genomes from under-represented unicellular green lineages

MAIN projects of research

Genome sequences are the written records of billions of years of evolutionary experiments. Each individual from a given species represents a distinct natural experiment with several possibilities and genetic solutions, from secondary metabolites or proteins to genetic elements controlling hundreds of genes and cellular processes. The organism targets in our project are from marine (pelagic, bathypelagic and benthic), freshwater, terrestrial and sea ice environments. Our key objective is to improve our understanding of the evolution of genome architectures, gene sequences, and metabolic capacities across the Chlorophyta.  The proposed organisms are also of interest for the manufacturing of biofuels, bioplastics and other bioproducts as well as for the environmental engineering of diverse microbiomes.

institutions and laboratories involved

France

• Dr. Gwenaël Piganeau and Frédéric Sanchez, CNRS – Environmental and Evolutionary Genomics of Phytoplankton Group – BIOM UMR7232- Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls sur mer.
• Dr. Ian Probert and Priscila Gourvril – Roscoff Culture Collection, Station Biologique de Roscoff (http://roscoff-culture-collection.org/)

Singapore

• Asst Prof Adriana Lopes dos Santos – Genomics and Evolution of Eukaryotes Lab – Asian School of Environment, NTU.