Editor's Summary

14 February 2008

A key protozoan genome

The genome sequence of the marine choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis has now been determined. Choanoflagellates are a mainly sessile group of protozoa resembling the 'feeding cells' of sponges, and are considered to be the closest living unicellular relatives of multicellular animals. Comparison of the M. brevicollis sequence with metazoan genomes suggests that the last unicellular ancestor of animals had intron-rich genes, some encoding protein domains characteristically associated with cell adhesion and the extracellular matrix in animals. This organism is strictly unicellular, but other choanoflagellates form colonies and may provide clues as to the origin of cell signalling and other systems in early metazoans.

Article: The genome of the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis and the origin of metazoans

Nicole King, M. Jody Westbrook, Susan L. Young, Alan Kuo, Monika Abedin, Jarrod Chapman, Stephen Fairclough, Uffe Hellsten, Yoh Isogai, Ivica Letunic, Michael Marr, David Pincus, Nicholas Putnam, Antonis Rokas, Kevin J. Wright, Richard Zuzow, William Dirks, Matthew Good, David Goodstein, Derek Lemons, Wanqing Li, Jessica B. Lyons, Andrea Morris, Scott Nichols, Daniel J. Richter, Asaf Salamov, JGI Sequencing, Peer Bork, Wendell A. Lim, Gerard Manning, W. Todd Miller, William McGinnis, Harris Shapiro, Robert Tjian, Igor V. Grigoriev & Daniel Rokhsar

doi:10.1038/nature06617

Abstract | Full Text | PDF (400K) | Supplementary information