PgmNr C19: Preliminary analysis on genome and transcriptome data of two species of karyorelictids, Loxodes sp. and Trachelocercidae sp. (Ciliophora, Karyorelictea)
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Authors:
Y. Yan 1,2 ; X. Maurer-Alcalá 2,3 ; A. Rogers 2 ; L. Katz 2,3


Institutes
1) Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China; 2) Smith College, Northampton, MA, US; 3) University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, US.


Abstract:

Karyorelictea are an understudied class  of ciliates characterized by the presence of postciliodesma fibers and non-dividing somatic macronuclei. Karyorelictids have both somatic macronucleus and transcriptionally silent germline micronucleus like other ciliates. However, during vegetative growth, their ‘paradiploid’ macronuclei are unable to divide and their number of macronuclei can only be reestablished by division and differentiation from germline micronuclei (Raikov, 1985).  All other ciliate classes have polyploid macronuclei dividing through amitosis (Raikov, 1985). Since the majority of Karyorelictids are currently uncultivable, few data are available compared to other groups of ciliates (i.e. only 72 nucleotide sequences including environmental samples and six protein sequences are in Genbank); and only a limited number of studies focusing on the karyorelictean nuclei have been published (Bobyleva et al., 1980; Raikov, 1963, 1972, 1989; Raikov and Karadzhan, 1985). Recently, we collected two karyorelictean species, Loxodes sp. and Trachelocercidae sp., to characterize genome features through  single cell whole genome amplification and whole transcriptome amplification. We are currently analyzing over 39 million Illumina reads from these taxa.  After the removal of bacterial contaminants and poor quality reads, we are  assembling the protein-coding genes from these taxa and performing pilot analyses of genome structure..