Isolation of clonally-derived cultures of Oophila amblystomatis

The goal of this work was to generate sequences associated with new cultures of the green alga Oophila amblystomatis. This species forms a mutualism with egg masses of the spotted salamander Ambystoma maculatum and several other amphibian taxa. This study (i) revealed the existence of several intragenomic variants of the 18S rRNA gene, which provides context for investigating the genetic identity of these symbiotic algae across space, time and hosts (ii) generated new isolates for taxonomic, transcriptomic, genomic and experimental study.