Understanding more about the dinoflagellate's mystical genome

Dinoflagellates usually have a good life when in good timeshttp://www.cusabio.com/. They live free-floating in the ocean or symbiotically with corals, or as lunch to a host of mollusks, tiny fish and coral species. Some of them make glowing waves at night since they are bioluminescent. However, things will get worse when conditions are wrong. Dinoflagellates poison shellfish beds with red tides and abandon coral reefs to a slow, bleached death. This happens more and more frequent. In order to find out the answer, UConn marine ecologist Senjie Lin led his research team and sequence the complete genome of dinoflagellate species S. kawagutii, becoming the first one who had done so. The results can be found in Science magazine. The species of S. kawagutii is an important endosymbiont of coral reefs, providing them with sugars and nutritious compounds. When it is not present, the corals bleach white, cannot grow and tend to die. However, although metabolic wastes from the coral host provide an enriched supply of nutrients in the otherwise nutrient-poor oceanic habitat, the relation seems to be not enssential S. kawagutii. The researchers guess that when the dinoflagellates don't like the conditions, they can jump ship and turn themselves into impervious little cysts and wait for the right time to ecolonize corals. This performance also can explain that S. kawagutii has an awfully large genome for a symbiont. Usually endosymbionts and parasites depend on the cellular machinery of their hosts and lack many genes that free-living organisms have. So here comes the question: Why does S. kawagutii have so many? No one can explain nowhttp://www.cusabio.com/. After analyzing the entire genome of S. kawagutii and comparing it with the genetic codes of related organisms which can be better understood, the team found some surprising things. For instance, they found genes associated with sexual reproduction. S. kawagutii typically reproduces asexually as other dinoflagellates do. A single dinoflagellate will simply split in two. However, when the dinoflagellates turn into cysts, they would reproduce sexually first, which mixes their genetic material with others, maybe in the hope that some of the offspring will gain traits better suited to the stressful environment. But sex related genes have never been found in other dinoflagellates. The results of the study show that K. kawagutii actually has had the bad times in corals. They also found that S. kawagutii has a gene regulatory system that looks like it could regulate certain genes in corals. That's to say, the dinoflagellates may be manipulating their host's genetic expression in order to make the conditions more comfier for them. Understanding the S. kawagutii's genome can help researchers better study other dinoflagellates which act many different roles in the ocean ecosystem, thus explaining how the environment changes affecting their way of life. Read more if you're interested in the content above:http://www.cusabio.com/Polyclonal-Antibody/CSHL1-Antibody-HRP-conjugated-11098205.html