Transcriptomes of free-living and Hatena-engulfed Nephroselmis

The aim of this project is to investigate changes of transcriptomes between free-living and Hatena-engulfed Nephroselmis. A katablepharid, Hatena arenicola engulf a prasinophyte, Nephroslmis as its plastid, however the Nephroselmis is not distributed equally in daughter cells of H. arenicola. Thus the endosymbiotic relationships can be one of model systems of early phase of endosymbiosis. In this project, we used a strain of free-living Nephroselmis, NIES-1418, which is very close to the symbiont of H. arenicola, and hundreds of H. arenicola cells.