Evolving Algae

Chara is a large and structurally complex green alga that is common in streams and ponds worldwide.Chara the other stoneworts (Charophyceae sensu stricto, or Charales sensu Mattox and Stewart) form an important component of the freshwater flora, and have superficial structural similarities to land plants. In 2001 our lab published a paper indicating that the… Continue reading Chara genome! →

Our recent publication in Bioessays, “Microbial Diversity in the Eukaryotic SAR Clade: Illuminating the Darkness Between Morphology and Molecular Data” was a collaborative effort between the Delwiche, Lane, and Katz labs. SAR taxa are members of the clade that includes Stramenopiles, Alveolates, and Rhizaria. These organisms comprise a major component of eukaryotic diversity, but because… Continue reading Review of Eukaryotic Microbial Diversity Out in BioEssays →

A first comprehensive analysis of the Marchantia genome was published today in Cell. Marchantia is a thalloid liverwort, a representative of a lineage of land plants that is among the earliest diverging groups of land plants. The relationships among ‘bryophytes’ (i.e., haploid dominant land-plants, including liverworts, hornworts, and mosses) remains uncertain, but liverworts are a strong… Continue reading Cell Preview of the Marchantia Genome →

The lab went on a week-long collecting expedition to Florida in early August, with our primary goal being to collect some understudied, warm-water dinoflagellates. We collected in both freshwater and open ocean environments, isolating single cells with drawn glass capillaries. We won’t really know how successful the expedition was for several months as we work… Continue reading Collecting Dinoflagellates in Florida →

This is my attempt to describe my lab’s research using the “Up-Goer Five Text Editor” (http://splasho.com/upgoer5/): Green things are very old. To get food, they sit in the sun and drink it up. Long ago they used to be two things, one green, and one not-green. The not-green thing ate the green thing, and pretty… Continue reading Small Green Things Study Plan →

Our collaborative paper on dinoflagellate evolution has now appeared in PNAS: Major transitions in dinoflagellate evolution unveiled by phylotranscriptomics Jan Janouškovec did a terrific job summarizing the current state of knowledge of dinoflagellate phylogeny and the implications this has for character evolution within the group. I think this paper is a significant contribution in dinoflagellate… Continue reading Major Transitions in Dinoflagellate Evolution →

The Palmophyllales are recently discovered and poorly understood deep-sea green algae that are phylogenetically close to the base of the green algal tree. An excellent new paper from Fred Leliaert looks at chloroplast genomic data from Verdigellas peltata (out of a specimen dredged up during the Deep Water Horizon oil spill) and places the organism in a… Continue reading Nice Nature News & Views on the Palmophyllophytes →

A new postdoc, Dr. Brittany Ott, joined the lab just in time for “Snowmageddon,” the heavy snowfall at the end of January. Brittany joins us from West Virginia University, where she earned her Ph.D. studying the gut and surface mucilage microflora of medicinal leeches. She has a strong background in microbiology and bioinformatics, and will be… Continue reading Welcome Dr. Brittany Ott! →

I have a book review coming out next month in BioScience (the publication of AIBS, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, which is a good organization that works toward integrating the life sciences). The text of the review is below. The copyright agreement allows me to present the text here, but to see the typeset… Continue reading Book review in BioScience — Biocode: The New Age of Genomics →

One of the main reasons that I study the biological diversity of dinoflagellates is that they are a living laboratory for the evolution of endosymbiotic organelles. This is at least in part because, although they have plastids (chloroplasts) that seem to be ancestral to the group, dinoflagellates are all purely photosynthetic organisms. Some are parasitic or predatory (and… Continue reading Mosaicism in Dinoflagellate Carotenoid Biosynthetic Pathways →