Youtor
Protists Reference Genomes
>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=zHDvoi4TjJw
Protist reference genomes: gaps, challenges and opportunities • Protists (AKA microbial eukaryotes) dominate all major supergroups of the tree of eukaryotes, holding most of the eukaryotic genomic diversity. Also, these organisms have proven to be very important to understanding how animals, plants and fungi evolved and are key for studying the origin of many cellular processes. They play fundamental roles in all ecosystems and are crucial in nutrient cycling. Furthermore, many of them are parasites of animals and plants, cause immense losses in crops and livestock, and behave as emerging pathogens that threaten endangered animal species. However, accessing this enormous genomic diversity is not trivial. • Retrieving protists in culture is a challenge for many reasons ranging from technical limitations to a lack of interest in funding isolation and culturing efforts. Unfortunately, many species are impossible to keep in culture, especially in the long run. Although the use of cultures would be the ideal scenario, a recently developed alternative to access their genomes is single-cell genomics. Single-cell genomics has been successfully used to study protists and to place them in the tree of life using phylogenomic approaches. • Another challenge that we face when working on protists is the lack of reference genomes in comparison with other eukaryotic groups. However, the situation is changing and the community has been working on establishing higher quality and more diverse reference databases that can be used for genome assembly and annotation. Still, many gaps need to be filled, as major eukaryotic clades are still unexplored from a genomic point of view. • The Catalan Initiative for the Earth Biogenome Project is turning its focus on protists after acknowledging these knowledge gaps in the eukaryotic genomic tree. We would like to propose a symposium for the BG24 focused on protists, to discuss the current efforts to generate protistan reference genomes, the methodological options available to unveil the protistan genomic diversity for those organisms that are refractory to culturing and discuss what a reference genome means for the community working on protists. • Full programme for this session can be found at the link below. • https://www.biodiversitygenomicsconfe...
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