The SCR7 Scan Dash Panel Gadget

One decade ago, sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene from environmental samples of the ocean surface unveiled an astounding diversity of planktonic microbial eukaryotes (Diez et?al., 2001; Moon-van der Staay et?al., 2001; Guillou et?al., 2008; Massana and Pedros-Alio, 2008). Metabarcoding approaches (Tautz and Domazet-Loso, 2011) have repeatedly enabled the identification of new pico-eukaryotic (cell size PTPRJ no cultured representatives (Goodstein et?al., 2012; Not et?al., 2012). It also revealed the ecological importance of microbial algae in coastal waters and the ecophysiological parameters responsible for their global distribution (Demir-Hilton et?al., 2011). However, the limits of using a few barcoding genes to estimate diversity became increasingly apparent with the availability of complete genomes. The comparison of the first pair of genomes Selleckchem SCR7 in the Ostreococcus genus, O.?tauri (Derelle et?al., 2006) and O.?lucimarinus (Palenik et?al., 2007), disclosed an unexpected divergence of their genome sequence, with over 15% of species-specific genes and high levels of protein divergence, despite a 99.8% identity over the complete 18S rRNA sequence (Piganeau et?al., 2011). The comparative analysis of complete genome sequences will yield alternative, less constrained, genes that more accurately represent species' diversity in microbial eukaryotes (Slapeta et?al., 2006; Piganeau et?al., 2011), and thus provide a better understanding of their ecology. The microalgal selleck chemical genomic era started with the publication of the genome sequence of the red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae in 2004 (Matsuzaki et?al., 2004), followed by projects focusing on the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana (Armbrust et?al., 2004) and the green alga O.?tauri, (Derelle et?al., 2006), which complemented large-scale expressed sequence tag (EST) projects (for a review, see Tirichine and Bowler, 2011). Fuelled by comparative genomics, recent sequencing initiatives have provided significant new insights into secondary endosymbiosis (Moustafa et?al., 2009; Deschamps and Moreira, 2012), genome organization and compaction (Derelle et?al., 2006; Palenik et?al., 2007), intron evolution (Worden et?al., 2009) and horizontal gene transfer (Bowler et?al., 2008; Moreau et?al., 2012) in different unicellular eukaryotic species. Although a few genome portals exist to browse individual genome sequences, exploring complete genome information from multiple species remains a major challenge. Consequently, performing evolutionary analyses using genome sequences generated by different labs or consortia requires a centralized infrastructure where all information is integrated, in combination with advanced, user-friendly methods for data mining. pico-PLAZA is a web-based resource (http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.