Phylogenetic Relationships within the Dinoflagellates

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Dinoflagellates are a common and important group of single- celled organisms. They are both free-living and symbiotic with a diversity of other organisms. The symbiotic forms have evolved several distinct functional relationships within their hosts, and this has led to differences of opinion concerning their evolutionary relationships, and their origin (or origins) from other single-celled eucaryotic groups. Drs. Clifford Brunk and David Chapman propose to obtain RNA sequence data from the appropriate species, providing a powerful data set from which to infer evolutionary relationships. The evolutionary tree based on the new sequence data will be compared with the trees based on biochemical and morphological data. The proposed research will have wide impact beyond the community of dinoflagellate specialists. This project focuses on some of the earliest branches in the tree of life, and the results will provide microbiologists, microbial ecologists, and marine biologists with a framework for studying diverse phenomena. The results will also break new ground in the use of molecular data from micro-organisms, and will provide new insight into the evolution of symbiosis.