Sequencing the sea lettuces: how green seaweed genomes shed light on the evolution of the green lineage

The green seaweeds are of enormous ecological, economic and evolutionary importance. They grow several times faster than land plants, giving rise to the nuisance "green tides" of the Yellow Sea and English Channel, and are key contributors to coastal biogeochemical cycles: their role in marine sulfur cycles is particularly important because they produce high levels of dimethylsulfoniopropionate, the main precursor of volatile dimethyl sulfide. They are also important to understanding the evolution of multicellularity in the green lineage, because their morphogenesis is dependent on bacterial signals, making them important species in which to study cross-kingdom communication. My group has recently published the first genome sequence of a green seaweed, Ulva mutabilis, and in this talk I discuss the light that it sheds on the independent acquisition of multicellularity, on adaptations to life in intertidal habitats, and on future directions for macroalgal genomics.

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