Putatively asexual chrysophytes have meiotic genes: evidence from transcriptomic data

Diana Kraus; Jingyun Chi; Jens Boenigk; Daniela Beisser; Nadine Graupner; Micah Dunthorn

doi:10.7717/peerj.5894

Putatively asexual chrysophytes have meiotic genes: evidence from transcriptomic data

PeerJ. 2019 Jan 16:6:e5894. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5894. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Diana Kraus¹, Jingyun Chi¹, Jens Boenigk², Daniela Beisser^{2

3}, Nadine Graupner², Micah Dunthorn^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecology, University of Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany.
² Department of Biodiversity, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
³ Centre for Water and Environmental Research (ZWU), University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
⁴ Department of Eukaryotic Microbiology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.

Abstract

Chrysophytes are a large group of heterotrophic, phototrophic, or even mixotrophic protists that are abundant in aquatic as well as terrestrial environments. Although much is known about chrysophyte biology and ecology, it is unknown if they are sexual or not. Here we use available transcriptomes of 18 isolates of 15 putatively asexual species to inventory the presence of genes used in meiosis. Since we were able to detect a set of nine meiosis-specific and 29 meiosis-related genes shared by the chrysophytes, we conclude that they are secretively sexual and therefore should be investigated further using genome sequencing to uncover any missed genes from the transcriptomes.

Keywords: Asexuality; Crossover pathways; Meiosis; Sex.

Grants and funding

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft provided support to Micah Dunthorn (grant #DU1319/1-1) and Jens Boenigk (grant #s BO3245/17 and BO3245/19). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.