Sequencing of the female Ectocarpus strain Ec597.. KY

The brown algae are a group of almost exclusively marine photosynthetic organisms that are particularly abundant along rocky shorelines in temperate regions of the world. All the members of this group are multicellular. The first complete brown algal genome sequence was obtained for the male Ectocarpus strain Ec32 (Cock et al., 2010 Nature 465, 617-621). In this project a female strain, Ec597, was sequenced. This strain, which is decended from Ec32 and a sister of Ec32, carries two mutations that effect life cycle progression. The first is in the IMMEDIATE UPRIGHT gene (Peters et al., Development 135, 1503-1512) and the second in the OUROBOROS gene (Coelho et al., PNAS 108, 11518-11523).