ArticleThe New phytologist2021
The genome of a nonphotosynthetic diatom provides insights into the metabolic shift to heterotrophy and constraints on the loss of photosynthesis.
Article in The New phytologist, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Eukaryotic metagenome-assembled genomes recovered from deep metagenomic sequencing of the seagrass,Microbial genomics · 2026Article
- The genome of Pleurosigma provides insights into the evolutionary adaptations of pelagic diatoms.DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes · 2026Article
- Reference genome for the benthic marine diatom Psammoneis japonica: Bacterial associations and repeat-driven genome size evolution in diatoms.Journal of phycology · 2025Article
- Diatom triacylglycerol metabolism: from carbon fixation to lipid droplet degradation.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Diatom heterotrophy on brown algal polysaccharides emerged through horizontal gene transfer, gene duplication, and neofunctionalization.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- High-quality genome assembly and annotation of Thalassiosira rotula (synonym of Thalassiosira gravida).Scientific data · 2025Article
- Latitude- and depth-driven divergence in protist trophic strategies revealed by a machine learning model.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- MarFERReT, an open-source, version-controlled reference library of marine microbial eukaryote functional genes.Scientific data · 2023Article
- Cooperative motility, force generation and mechanosensing in a foraging non-photosynthetic diatom.Open biology · 2023Article
- Transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses revealed regulation mechanism of mixotrophic Cylindrotheca sp. glycerol utilization and biomass promotion.Biotechnology for biofuels and bioproducts · 2023Article
- What Was Old Is New Again: The Pennate DiatomMarine drugs · 2022Review
- The dynamic trophic architecture of open-ocean protist communities revealed through machine-guided metatranscriptomics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Impact of organic carbon acquisition on growth and functional biomolecule production in diatoms.Microbial cell factories · 2021Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although most of the tens of thousands of diatom species are photoautotrophs, a small number of heterotrophic species no longer photosynthesize. We sequenced the genome of a nonphotosynthetic diatom, Nitzschia Nitz4, to determine how carbon metabolism was altered in the wake of this trophic shift. Nitzschia Nitz4 has retained its plastid and plastid genome, but changes associated with the transition to heterotrophy were cellular-wide and included losses of photosynthesis-related genes from the nuclear and plastid genomes, elimination of isoprenoid biosynthesis in the plastid, and remodeling of mitochondrial glycolysis to maximize adenosine triphosphte (ATP) yield. The genome contains a β-ketoadipate pathway that may allow Nitzschia Nitz4 to metabolize lignin-derived compounds. Diatom plastids lack an oxidative pentose phosphate pathway (oPPP), leaving photosynthesis as the primary source of NADPH to support essential biosynthetic pathways in the plastid and, by extension, limiting available sources of NADPH in nonphotosynthetic plastids. The genome revealed similarities between nonphotosynthetic diatoms and apicomplexan parasites for provisioning NADPH in their plastids and highlighted the ancestral absence of a plastid oPPP as a potentially important constraint on loss of photosynthesis, a hypothesis supported by the higher frequency of transitions to parasitism or heterotrophy in lineages that have a plastid oPPP.
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