Picobiliphyta: an Algal group new to Science
Final Report Abstract
The project has eventually reached its goals: the establishment of a clonal culture of an ‘unculturable’ picoeukaryote (which proved to be the most difficult part of the project), and the determination of the morphological identity of a novel protist phylum by light microscopy, SEM and TEM. The results, however, were unexpected: the ‘picobiliphyta’ are neither ‘bili’ nor ‘phyta’ and only marginally ‘pico’ (only when starved cells are considered), a novel name for the phylum is warranted. The data are in accordance with a recent single-cell genome sequence analysis from three individual cells of ‘picobiliphytes’, which also found no evidence for plastid genes in these cells. Yoon et al. (2011) speculated about biotic interactions between the ‘picobiliphyte’ cells and single-stranded DNA viruses and specific bacteria whose DNA was found in the sorted droplets. Whether such ‘interactions’ only relate to contamination of the sorted cells with viruses and bacteria (or their DNA) or represent true trophic interactions, can only be studied in living cultures that are now available.
