Ethyl methansulfonate mutagenesis of Macrocystis pyrifera gametophytes

This project establishes a scalable approach for forward genetic screen of Macrocystis pyrifera gametophytes. This was accomplished by treating M. pyrifera gametophytes with the alkylating agent ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) to induce point mutations and plating the EMS-treated gametophytes on agar-plates to immobilize the cells. The solid-medium culture method enables high throughput screening for mutants and streamlined strain isolation. A mutant gametophyte strain was isolated and whole genome sequenced with Illumina along with the original, control, strain to identify the mutation rate of EMS on M. pyrifera gametophytes.