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). |