Gene Expression in Dunaliella salina Bardawil +/- Iron

Dunaliella salina Bardawil (also known as Dunaliella bardawil) is an extremophilic, unicellular green alga from the Chlorophyte lineage. D. salina is found in hypersaline environments where it can tolerate extremes of heat, light, pH, and up to saturating concentrations of salt. The D. salina Bardawil isolate (UTEX LB 2538) was found in a salt pond near the Bardawil Lagoon on the Sinai peninsula in 1976. This isolate of D. salina is the richest natural source of beta-carotene, a highly valuable commercial product. This accession includes an RNA-Seq analysis of D. salina Bardawil cultures grown in iron-replete (1.5 µM) or iron-deficient (0 µM) media. Precultures of Dunaliella salina Bardawil (UTEX LB 2538) were inoculated at 4x10^5 cells/mL into triplicate flasks containing media with 1.5 µM or 0 µM added iron and 1 M NaCl. Cultures were grown on shaking platforms (140 rpm) at 24°C under constant light (50 µE m^-2 sec^-1). After three days of growth, total RNA was collected, poly(A)-selected, and subjected to single-end 50 nt sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq platform. Sequenced data was aligned to the genome assembly included with this accession by RNA STAR. Expression was quantified in terms of Fragments per kb of transcript per million reads mapped (FPKMs) by cuffdiff.