Category: Molecular biology
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An unseen organism and a hypothesis about the origin of viruses
What is a parasite? A definition that often comes up is this one: Parasites, in a phrase, are predators that eat prey in units of less than one. Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (2014) The sentence is funny, but in my opinion it’s not really a good definition. First, what about “units…
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The sorcerer’s apprentices of photosynthesis
This is the third part of my series on Dinophysis. If you didn’t read the first and second part, go read them and come back! We’ve now seen how Dinophysis was finally cultivated in the lab: by feeding it with its prey, the ciliate Mesodinium rubrum. Both of these microbes thrive by acquiring chloroplasts from foreign origin.…
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How big are dinoflagellate genomes?
When you begin working on dinoflagellates, you quickly learn that they have (very) big genomes. But how big really? Recently, I was preparing a presentation on dinoflagellates and I was faced with this question, so I investigated a bit. I found this great data visualisation by Tom White that plotted genome size in different groups…
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