ANALYSIS OF EXPRESSED SEQUENCE TAGS FROM THE GREEN ALGA DUNALIELLA SALINA (CHLOROPHYTA)(1)

The unicellular green alga Dunaliella salina (Dunal) Teodor. is a novel model photosynthetic eukaryote for studying photosystems, high salinity acclimation, and carotenoid accumulation. In spite of such significance, there have been limited studies on the Dunaliella genome transcriptome and proteome. To further investigate D. salina, a cDNA library was constructed and sequenced. Here, we present the analysis of the 2,282 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) generated together with 3,990 ESTs from dbEST. A total of 4,148 unique sequences (UniSeqs) were identified, of which 56.1% had sequence similarity with Uniprot entries, suggesting that a large number of unique genes may be harbored by Dunaliella. Additionally, protein family domains were identified to further characterize these sequences. Then, we also compared EST sequences with different complete eukaryotic genomes from several animals, plants, and fungi. We observed notable differences between D. salina and other organisms. This EST collection and its annotation provided a significant resource for basic and applied research on D. salina and laid the foundation for a systematic analysis of the transcriptome basis of green algae development and diversification.