Protist Genomics and the Darwin Tree of Life Project.
The Sanger Institute, along with a host of collaborators, are aiming to sequence ‘every’ eukaryotic species resident in Britain. In collaboration with the Earlham Institute and MBA Plymouth we are charged with preparing protist samples for genome sequencing. Working closely with CCAP and CABI we are preparing to sequence every protist sampled in the UK and maintained in a UK culture collection. Of course, this only covers a small minority of protistan diversity, as such we are continuing to work on single cell genome and transcriptome pipelines in order to begin a very large culture-free genome sequencing initiative with the aim of sequencing thousands of cells and their associated microbiomes.
Examples of our work in this area:
- Leonard G, Labarre A, Milner DS, Monier A, Soanes D, Wideman JG, Maguire F, Stevens S, Sain D, Grau-Bové X. 2018. Comparative genomic analysis of the ‘pseudofungus’ Hyphochytrium catenoides. Open Biology 8:170184.
- Wideman JG, Lax G, Leonard G, Milner DS, Rodríguez-Martínez R, Simpson AG, Richards TA. 2019. A single-cell genome reveals diplonemid-like ancestry of kinetoplastid mitochondrial gene structure. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 374:20190100.
- Wideman JG, Monier A, Rodríguez-Martínez R, Leonard G, Cook E, Poirier C, Maguire F, Milner DS, Irwin NA, Moore K. 2020. Unexpected mitochondrial genome diversity revealed by targeted single-cell genomics of heterotrophic flagellated protists. Nature Microbiology 5:154-165.