The core objective of this study is to use coordinated multigene phylogenetic analyses and ultrastructure of cells in order to address diversity and evolution for photosynthetic stramenopiles. Much of evolutionary uncertainty of photosynthetic stramenopiles arises from limited and patchy molecular data, many of which are from either single gene sequences or a complete absence of sequence data. To achieve our project building a robust tree of photosynthetic stramenopiles, we will isolate and sequence from taxa selected from each class of stramenopiles, and observe ultrastructure of zoospores or cells from representative species. This is a three-year project, based on three laboratories at university and institution; two labs are responsible for acquisition and analyses of molecular data, and one lab leads the transmission electron microscopy. We will gather available multigene and ultrastructure data from the evolutionarily- diverse photosynthetic stramenopiles. To avoid species confusion, we will focus mainly on species available in established culture collections or from colleagues. Our taxon selection will be mainly limited to at least 51 taxa. However, we will maintain flexibility to increase sampling of the photosynthetic stramenopiles from Korea and to accomodate inclusion of newly discovered taxa. We will characterize approximately one kilobase from eight primary genes such as psaA, psbA, psbC, and rbcL in plastid and SSU rDNA, actin, beta-tubulin, and hsp90 in nucleus, which make these excellent choices for the present study. A total of approximately 8,000 base pairs from each of 51 taxa will be analyzed. This work has been supported by KOSEF grants (March 2006 ? February 2009).