Scientific and Community News

A new on-line ordering form and secure on-line payment site are now working. A shopping cart-based order system is under construction and should be up soon. Among the new acquisitions are the artificial miRNA plasmids recently described by Molnar et al. [PMID: 19054357]. See the plasmid list for additional information.

Ralph Lewin, whose work with Chlamydomonas began in the 1940s, died on November 30 at age 87. A lengthy and very nice obituary is posted on the web site of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The Chlamydomonas Sourcebook, Second Edition, is now available for purchase from Elsevier Science and Technology. From the home page, a search for “Chlamydomonas” will retrieve the information on how to order. The three volumes can be purchased individually, or as a set.

A draft genome of Chlorella sp. NC64A is now available at the JGI browser. See http://genome.jgi-psf.org/ChlNC64A_1/ChlNC64A_1.info.html for details of the project. There is also a web site dedicated to Chlorella and chlorella virus genomes: http://greengene.uml.edu/

The Chlamydomonas Genome Reveals the Evolution of Key Animal and Plant Functions, by Sabeeha Merchant, Simon Prochnik, et al. appears in the October 12 issue ofScience. Please see the press release at JGI for additional information. More press releases: National Science Foundation UCLA, including a very nice photo of Sabeeha Merchant Carnegie Institution CNRS

The Joint Genome Institute is pleased to announce the public release of the Volvox carteri genome. Our annotation includes the 1265 scaffolds and 138 Mbp of the 8.1x assembly and we predicted 15,544 genes, with the following average properties: Gene length 5269 nt Transcript length 1833 nt Protein length 558 aa Exon frequency 7.78 exons … Continued

In the course of over one year, we managed to adapt Chlamy wild type cells to grow in 100% D2O. Persons interested in these cells should contact: Christoph F. Beck Institute of Biology III University of Freiburg Freiburg Germany

JGI has released draft versions of the Ostreococcus tauri and lucimarinus genomes: http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Ost9901_3/Ost9901_3.home.html http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Ostta4/Ostta4.home.html From the web site above: “Ostreococcus belongs to the Prasinophyceae, an early-diverging class within the green plant lineage, and is reported as a globally abundant, single-celled alga thriving in the upper (illuminated) water column of the oceans. The most striking feature … Continued

Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to announce that JGI has completed automated annotation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii v3.0. 15,256 gene models have been predicted and annotated; over 2,000 curated annotations have been transferred from the previous release. Genome Portal is now publicly available from www.jgi.doe.gov/chlamy Best regards, Igor Grigoriev Genome Annotation Group Leader US DOE Joint … Continued

The flagellar proteome database described by Pazour et al, J. Cell Biol. 170, 103-113 (2005) is now on line at http://labs.umassmed.edu/chlamyfp. The website has a sortable list of all proteins identified in C. reinhardtii flagellar membrane, matrix and axonemal fractions by mass spectrometry. The list can be searched by Interpro descriptions or for transmembrane helices, … Continued