Nannochloropsis oceanica is an emerging model organism for photosynthetic Stramenopiles (heterokonts) and one of several species of the eustigmatophyte genus Nannochloropsis. These unicellular microalgae are widely considered to be promising potential feedstocks for the production of biofuels, nutraceuticals, and other bioproducts due to their high productivity and oil content. N. oceanica has a relatively small genome of ~30 Mb and a rapidly developing molecular toolkit, including transformation, targeted gene replacement by homologous recombination, CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing, and parts for synthetic biology. A team of MSU researchers and external collaborators coordinated by the laboratory of Christoph Benning has released a draft genome sequence of the N. oceanica strain CCMP1779
Genome Reference(s)
Vieler A, Wu G, Tsai CH, Bullard B, Cornish AJ, Harvey C, Reca IB, Thornburg C, Achawanantakun R, Buehl CJ, Campbell MS, Cavalier D, Childs KL, Clark TJ, Deshpande R, Erickson E, Armenia Ferguson A, Handee W, Kong Q, Li X, Liu B, Lundback S, Peng C, Roston RL, Sanjaya, Simpson JP, Terbush A, Warakanont J, Zäuner S, Farre EM, Hegg EL, Jiang N, Kuo MH, Lu Y, Niyogi KK, Ohlrogge J, Osteryoung KW, Shachar-Hill Y, Sears BB, Sun Y, Takahashi H, Yandell M, Shiu SH, Benning C
Genome, functional gene annotation, and nuclear transformation of the heterokont oleaginous alga Nannochloropsis oceanica CCMP1779.
PLoS Genet. 2012;8(11):e1003064. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003064
