Oxytoxum lohmannii, a culture-amenable heterotroph

Oxytoxum lohmannii is one of the few heterotrophic dinoflagellates that has been successfully cultured. We sequenced single cell transcriptomes from both cultured and wild cells and performed a phylogenomic analysis with the resulting data, finding that Oxytoxum is sister to the photosynthetic lineage, Prorocentrum. This finding, together with electron microscopy and observations of feeding behavior, bring us closer to understanding this lineage, which can be used to better understand heterotrophy and associated mechanisms in dinoflagellates.