Abstract
Dinoflagellates are a member of the Alveolata, and elucidation of the early evolution of alveolates is important for our understanding of dinoflagellates, and vice versa. The ultrastructure of the flagellar apparatus has been described from several dinoflagellates in the last few decades, and the basic components appear to be well conserved. The typical dinoflagellate apparatus is composed of two basal bodies surrounded by striated collars attached to a connective fiber. The longitudinal basal body is connected to a longitudinal microtubular root (LMR; equivalent of R1) and single microtubular root (R2), whereas the transverse basal body is connected to a transverse microtubular root (TMR; R3) and transverse striated root (TSR) with a microtubule (R4). Some of these components, especially the connective fibers and collars, are dinoflagellate specific characteristics that make their flagellar apparatus relatively complex. We also compare these structures with the flagellar apparatus from a number of close relatives of dinoflagellates and their sister, the apicomplexans, including colpodellids, perkinsids, and Psammosa. Though the ultrastructural knowledge of these lineages is still relatively modest, it provides us with an interesting viewpoint of the character evolution of the flagellar apparatus among those lineages.
Highlights
Dinoflagellates are one of the most abundant protist groups in aquatic environments, and play important roles as primary producers, grazers, and parasites [1,2,3,4,5]
There are several lineages related to the apicomplexans, such as the photosynthetic genera Chromera and Vitrella, and free-living predators known as colpodellids [6,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
Rastrimonas subtilis (Cryptophagus subtilis in the original description [43,45]) is a parasite of cryptophytes, which is classified as a perkinsid, there is no molecular data that are available to date to confirm this
Summary
Dinoflagellates are one of the most abundant protist groups in aquatic environments, and play important roles as primary producers, grazers, and parasites [1,2,3,4,5]. According to the current view based on molecular phylogenies, the closest sister group to dinoflagellates is the perkinsids [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. The dinoflagellates and perkinsids have been classified as Dinozoa, one of three major groups in Alveolata. The recent leap in our understanding of genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic information means that we have considerable molecular data from the apicomplexans, ciliates, and dinoflagellates, which altogether enables us to compare these distant lineages ( the availability of such data from the “intermediate” lineages like perkinsids and colpodellids remains a problem).
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