通過100余位科學(xué)家的努力,，衣藻（一種單細(xì)胞土生藻類）的基因組已經(jīng)基本測定完成。在10月12日的《科學(xué)》雜志上，研究人員發(fā)表了他們對萊氏衣藻（Chlamydomonas  reinhardtii）基因組的分析報(bào)告。研究人員在衣藻基因組中發(fā)現(xiàn)了動植物早期進(jìn)化的線索，尤其是在光合作用和鞭毛進(jìn)化方面,。

    由于它很強(qiáng)的適應(yīng)性和較短的繁殖周期,，長期以來，衣藻是科學(xué)研究的重要模型之一,。幾年前,，科學(xué)家對衣藻基因組的認(rèn)識不到全部序列的2%，而最新的研究已經(jīng)將這一數(shù)字提高到了95%,。同時,，新的研究表明，衣藻基因數(shù)量在1萬5千個左右,，其中包含了大量關(guān)于現(xiàn)代動植物祖先的信息,。

    論文作者之一、美國卡內(nèi)基學(xué)院（Carnegie  Institution）的Arthur  Grossman表示,，“研究衣藻基因組就像逛思維的‘糖果店’,。我們能夠知道生物祖先的情況，鞭毛的進(jìn)化和功能,，以及它們不同的蛋白如何與人類疾病相關(guān),。此外，我們還能確定影響光合作用的未知基因類別,。”

    在測定衣藻基因組及追溯其進(jìn)化歷史后,，研究人員還將衣藻與其他生物的基因組進(jìn)行了對比，比如人類和開花植物,。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn),，三者有35%的基因是共有的，僅衣藻與人類基因組共有的為45%,，而僅衣藻與開花植物共有的為62%,。

     研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，大部分與植物光合作用相關(guān)的基因在衣藻中都能找到,，這證實(shí)了衣藻的光合作用機(jī)制與植物十分相似的認(rèn)識,。藉此，研究人員還確定了為衣藻,、開花植物以及其他藻類所共有,、卻不存在于非光合作用生物體內(nèi)的蛋白家族。

     此外,，新的研究還確定了與衣藻鞭毛（flagella）相關(guān)的蛋白,，這有望加深科學(xué)家對人類大腦等部位的纖毛（cilia,，細(xì)小的細(xì)胞器,，用于提供移動力或者感知周圍環(huán)境，是人類實(shí)現(xiàn)大腦功能和新陳代謝所必需的）的理解和認(rèn)識,，并為纖毛缺損導(dǎo)致的人類疾病研究開辟新的途徑,。（科學(xué)網(wǎng)  任霄鵬/編譯）

原始出處:

Science 12 October 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5848, pp. 245 - 250
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143609

The Chlamydomonas Genome Reveals the Evolution of Key Animal and Plant Functions

Sabeeha S. Merchant,1* Simon E. Prochnik,2* Olivier Vallon,3 Elizabeth H. Harris,4 Steven J. Karpowicz,1 George B. Witman,5 Astrid Terry,2 Asaf Salamov,2 Lillian K. Fritz-Laylin,6 Laurence Maréchal-Drouard,7 Wallace F. Marshall,8 Liang-Hu Qu,9 David R. Nelson,10 Anton A. Sanderfoot,11 Martin H. Spalding,12 Vladimir V. Kapitonov,13 Qinghu Ren,14 Patrick Ferris,15 Erika Lindquist,2 Harris Shapiro,2 Susan M. Lucas,2 Jane Grimwood,16 Jeremy Schmutz,16 Pierre Cardol,3,17 Heriberto Cerutti,18 Guillaume Chanfreau,1 Chun-Long Chen,9 Valérie Cognat,7 Martin T. Croft,19 Rachel Dent,20 Susan Dutcher,21 Emilio Fernández,22 Hideya Fukuzawa,23 David González-Ballester,24 Diego González-Halphen,25 Armin Hallmann,26 Marc Hanikenne,17 Michael Hippler,27 William Inwood,20 Kamel Jabbari,28 Ming Kalanon,29 Richard Kuras,3 Paul A. Lefebvre,11 Stéphane D. Lemaire,30 Alexey V. Lobanov,31 Martin Lohr,32 Andrea Manuell,33 Iris Meier,34 Laurens Mets,35 Maria Mittag,36 Telsa Mittelmeier,37 James V. Moroney,38 Jeffrey Moseley,24 Carolyn Napoli,39 Aurora M. Nedelcu,40 Krishna Niyogi,20 Sergey V. Novoselov,31 Ian T. Paulsen,14 Greg Pazour,41 Saul Purton,42 Jean-Philippe Ral,43 Diego Mauricio Riaño-Pachón,44 Wayne Riekhof,45 Linda Rymarquis,46 Michael Schroda,47 David Stern,48 James Umen,15 Robert Willows,49 Nedra Wilson,50 Sara Lana Zimmer,48 Jens Allmer,51 Janneke Balk,19 Katerina Bisova,52 Chong-Jian Chen,9 Marek Elias,53 Karla Gendler,39 Charles Hauser,54 Mary Rose Lamb,55 Heidi Ledford,20 Joanne C. Long,1 Jun Minagawa,56 M. Dudley Page,1 Junmin Pan,57 Wirulda Pootakham,24 Sanja Roje,58 Annkatrin Rose,59 Eric Stahlberg,34 Aimee M. Terauchi,1 Pinfen Yang,60 Steven Ball,61 Chris Bowler,28,62 Carol L. Dieckmann,37 Vadim N. Gladyshev,31 Pamela Green,46 Richard Jorgensen,39 Stephen Mayfield,33 Bernd Mueller-Roeber,44 Sathish Rajamani,63 Richard T. Sayre,34 Peter Brokstein,2 Inna Dubchak,2 David Goodstein,2 Leila Hornick,2 Y. Wayne Huang,2 Jinal Jhaveri,2 Yigong Luo,2 Diego Martínez,2 Wing Chi Abby Ngau,2 Bobby Otillar,2 Alexander Poliakov,2 Aaron Porter,2 Lukasz Szajkowski,2 Gregory Werner,2 Kemin Zhou,2 Igor V. Grigoriev,2 Daniel S. Rokhsar,2,6 Arthur R. Grossman24

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga whose lineage diverged from land plants over 1 billion years ago. It is a model system for studying chloroplast-based photosynthesis, as well as the structure, assembly, and function of eukaryotic flagella (cilia), which were inherited from the common ancestor of plants and animals, but lost in land plants. We sequenced the 120-megabase nuclear genome of Chlamydomonas and performed comparative phylogenomic analyses, identifying genes encoding uncharacterized proteins that are likely associated with the function and biogenesis of chloroplasts or eukaryotic flagella. Analyses of the Chlamydomonas genome advance our understanding of the ancestral eukaryotic cell, reveal previously unknown genes associated with photosynthetic and flagellar functions, and establish links between ciliopathy and the composition and function of flagella.

1 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
2 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Walnut Creek, CA 94598, USA.
3 CNRS, Université Paris 6, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, 75005 Paris, France.
4 Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
5 Department of Cell Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA.
6 Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
7 Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes, CNRS, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
8 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
9 Biotechnology Research Center, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
10 Department of Molecular Sciences and Center of Excellence in Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Tennessee, Memphis, TN 38163, USA.
11 Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.
12 Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA.
13 Genetic Information Research Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
14 The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, MD 20850, USA.
15 Plant Biology Laboratory, Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
16 Stanford Human Genome Center, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
17 Plant Biology Institute, Department of Life Sciences, University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium.
18 University of Nebraska-Lincoln, School of Biological Sciences–Plant Science Initiative, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA.
19 Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EA, UK.
20 Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
21 Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
22 Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Córdoba, Spain.
23 Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
24 Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, CA 94306, USA.
25 Departamento de Genética Molecular, Instituto de Fisiología Celular, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México 04510 DF, Mexico.
26 Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Plants, University of Bielefeld, D-33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
27 Department of Biology, Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Münster, 48143 Münster, Germany.
28 CNRS UMR 8186, Département de Biologie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 75230 Paris, France.
29 Plant Cell Biology Research Centre, The School of Botany, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia.
30 Institut de Biotechnologie des Plantes, UMR 8618, CNRS/Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France.
31 Department of Biochemistry, N151 Beadle Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588–0664, USA.
32 Institut für Allgemeine Botanik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 55099 Mainz, Germany.
33 Department of Cell Biology and Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
34 PCMB and Plant Biotechnology Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
35 Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
36 Institut für Allgemeine Botanik und Pflanzenphysiologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany.
37 Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
38 Department of Biological Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
39 Department of Plant Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
40 Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada E3B 6E1.
41 Department of Physiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, USA.
42 Department of Biology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
43 Unité de Glycobiologie Structurale et Fonctionnelle, UMR8576 CNRS/USTL, IFR 118, Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille, Cedex, France.
44 Universität Potsdam, Institut für Biochemie und Biologie, D-14476 Golm, Germany.
45 Department of Medicine, National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Denver, CO 80206, USA.
46 Delaware Biotechnology Institute, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19711, USA.
47 Institute of Biology II/Plant Biochemistry, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.
48 Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
49 Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia.
50 Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Oklahoma State University, Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, OK 74107, USA.
51 Izmir Ekonomi Universitesi, 35330 Balcova-Izmir Turkey.
52 Institute of Microbiology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic.
53 Department of Plant Physiology, Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, 128 44 Prague 2, Czech Republic.
54 Bioinformatics Program, St. Edward's University, Austin, TX 78704, USA.
55 Department of Biology, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA 98407, USA.
56 Institute of Low-Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, 060-0819, Japan.
57 Department of Biology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 100084.
58 Institute of Biological Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman, WA99164, USA.
59 Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, USA.
60 Department of Biology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA.
61 UMR8576 CNRS, Laboratory of Biological Chemistry, 59655 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
62 Cell Signaling Laboratory, Stazione Zoologica, I 80121 Naples, Italy.
63 Graduate Program in Biophysics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected] (D.S.R.); [email protected] (A.R.G.)