Reasons to build dinoflagellate Symbiodinium BAC libraries

Dinoflagellates are ubiquitous marine and freshwater protists. As free-living photosynthetic plankton, they account for ~50% of the primary productivity of oceans and lakes. As photosynthetic symbionts, they provide essential nutrients to most corals and numerous other marine invertebrates, supporting coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth, a rich food source, and a potential source of future pharmaceuticals. When they are expelled from their coral hosts during mass coral bleaching events, coral reefs and the surrounding ecosystems rapidly decline and die. Population explosions of dinoflagellates are the cause of red tides, extensive fish kills, and paralytic shellfish poisoning. As parasites and predators, they threaten numerous fisheries. As bioluminescent organisms, they are a spectacular feature of nighttime oceans and an established model for luminescence chemistry. Dinoflagellates are alveolates and a sister group to the apicomplexans–important human and animal pathogens. The apicomplexans are obligate intracellular parasites, e.g. Plasmodium spp. the agents of malaria. Describing a dinoflagellate alveolate that is an intracellular symbiont will aid us in understanding the capacities, weaknesses and evolution of the apicomplexans, and will inform the apicomplexan genomes in a way directly relevant to the development of antimalarial and antiapicomplexan drugs. Dinoflagellates, because of these roles, impact human health and life on many levels. We have proposed in a separate white paper that the Symbiodinium genome be sequenced, to increase our understanding of these important organisms. Symbiodinium is the primary symbiont of marine invertebrates, is a well studied dinoflagellate, has a very small genome for a dinoflagellate (the vegetative cells are haploid and contain ~2.5 x 109 bp of DNA), and is representative of the metabolic capabilities of dinoflagellates as a group. Here we request that a BAC library be made for a common Caribbean Symbiodinium species, to serve as a basis for