Prof. John Archibald, Director of Dalhousie’s Institute for Comparative Genomics, Halifax

As a guest of the CRC 1182

Prof. John Archibald

Institute for Comparative Genomics
Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

will give a talk on the 6th of November at 4:00pm in the Center for Molucular Biosciences (ZMB) seminar room (4th floor, am Botanischen Garten 11, 24118 Kiel). The lecture (on site) will be followed by a reception with wine and cheese.

Title of the talk:

Gene exchange across the eukaryotic tree of life: highways, byways, and bike paths

Abstract:

Endosymbiosis has had a profound impact on the evolution of eukaryotic life. Mitochondria and plastids are endosymbiotically-derived organelles—they evolved from once free-living bacteria. Subsequent to the evolution of ‘primary’ plastids from cyanobacteria, the process of ‘secondary’ (i.e., eukaryote-eukaryote) endosymbiosis has served to spread plastids horizontally across the eukaryotic tree. The nuclear genomes of many microbial eukaryotes are evolutionary mosaics—they are mixtures of genes that have come from different prokaryotic and eukaryotic lineages. In this presentation I will summarize what is known about the genetic and cell biological diversity of protists and single-celled algae, and present new data exploring the extent to which horizontal gene transfers from bacteria and viruses have also contributed to genome mosaicism across the eukaryotic tree of life.