Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

The Barcode Blog

A mostly scientific blog about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery. I encourage your commentary. -- Mark Stoeckle

Subscribe to this blog

Sign up for email notifications

«
»

Exploring unicellular eukaryotic universe with mtDNA

Tetrahymena sp Most DNA barcode research to date analyzes multicellular animals, but why stop there? Unicellular eukaryotes or “protists” probably comprise most of Earth’s biomass and encompass more genetic diversity than all multicellular animals and plants combined.  In current J Eukaryot Microbiol 2006 53:385 Denis Lynn and Michaela Struder-Kypke report on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I sequences in Tetrahymena, a ciliate protozoan genus related to Paramecium which includes T. thermophila, a model organism and the first free-living unicellular eukaryote genome sequenced. The authors analyzed 14 isolates of T. thermophila from 2 geographically distant locations, and 4 pairs of Tetrahymena sister species selected because they show NO sequence difference in nuclear small subunit ribsomal (SSrRNA) genes. They found less than 1% intraspecific sequence variation within T. thermophila isolates. Differences between species ranged from 1%-12% and the sister species pairs which have identical SSrRNA genes showed differences in mtCOI sequences. 

This early study suggests further exploration of unicellular eukaryotic biodiversity with COI barcodes will be fruitful. 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 11:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.

Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu

About this site

This web site is an outgrowth of the Taxonomy, DNA, and Barcode of Life meeting held at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, September 9-12, 2003. It is designed and managed by Mark Stoeckle, Perrin Meyer, and Jason Yung at the Program for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.

About the Program for the Human Environment

The involvement of the Program for the Human Environment in DNA barcoding dates to Jesse Ausubel's attendance in February 2002 at a conference in Nova Scotia organized by the Canadian Center for Marine Biodiversity. At the conference, Paul Hebert presented for the first time his concept of large-scale DNA barcoding for species identification. Impressed by the potential for this technology to address difficult challenges in the Census of Marine Life, Jesse agreed with Paul on encouraging a conference to explore the contribution taxonomy and DNA could make to the Census as well as other large-scale terrestrial efforts. In his capacity as a Program Director of the Sloan Foundation, Jesse turned to the Banbury Conference Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose leader Jan Witkowski prepared a strong proposal to explore both the scientific reliability of barcoding and the processes that might bring it to broad application. Concurrently, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle began to work with the Hebert lab on analytic studies of barcoding in birds. Our involvement in barcoding now takes 3 forms: assisting the organizational development of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and the Barcode of Life Initiative; contributing to the scientific development of the field, especially by studies in birds, and contributing to public understanding of the science and technology of barcoding and its applications through improved visualization techniques and preparation of brochures and other broadly accessible means, including this website. While the Sloan Foundation continues to support CBOL through a grant to the Smithsonian Institution, it does not provide financial support for barcoding research itself or support to the PHE for its research in this field.