Newest Members of the NCMA Collection.

The NCMA collection has always actively grown through contributions from you the user community.  NCMA is currently working on executing part of its strategic vision to increase our macroalgae holdings. As part of this strategic vision, NCMA has recently worked with the University of Conecticut to accession Dr. Charlie Yarish's diverse macroalgae collection, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Instituion and Univesity of Connecticut to accession Drs. Scott Lindell and Charlie Yarish's Kelp collection (collected under ARPA-E MARINER program). The UCONN macroalgae subcollection is comprised of 229 strains collected from around the globe. These strains represent 9 genera and 23 species, subpolar to subtropical, collected from 9 countries (Summarized in the Table below). The WHOI/UCONN macroalgae sub collection is comprised of 1,074 isolates of Kelp gametophytes from the New England region and Alaska. These strains are all available on our Algae Strain Catalog, or by reaching out to ncma@bigelow.org. Please reach out if you are interested in any of these strains – we look forward to helping you develop amazing science applications with these strains.

Recent Publication Based Upon Strains in the NCMA Collection.

Strains in the NCMA collection are the foundation for scientific advance in a wide range of fields. Below is a recent paper that examines the evolutionary history of algae by digging deep into the genome of green plants.  

Lomas, M.W., A.R. Neeley, R. Vandermeulen, A. Mannino, C. Thomas, M. Novak, and S.A. Freeman, Phytoplankton optical fingerprint libraries for development of phytoplankton ocean color satellite products. Scientific Data, 2024. 11: p. 168.

Li, L., Wang, S., Wang, H., Sahu, S.K., Marin, B., Li, H., Xu, Y., Liang, H., Cheng, S., Reder, T., Çebi, Z., Wittek, S., Petersen, M., Melkonian, B., Du, H., Yang, H., Wang, J., Wong, G.K.-S., Xu, X., Liu, X., Van de Peer, Y., Melkonian, M., Liu, H. (2020). The genome of Prasinoderma coloniale unveils the existence of a third phylum within green plants. Nature Ecology and Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1221-7

Green plants (Virdiplantae) had previously been divided into two groups: the phylum Streptophyta (land plants and the paraphyletic group of streptophyte algae) and the Chlorophyta (all other green algae). However, no living representative of a common ancestor for these lineages had been identified.

Comprised of species living in deep-water, low nutrient environments, the class Palmophyllophyceae was thought to be one of the first divergent lineages within the Chlorophyta. Previous phylogenetic trees were based on organelle genomes, and did not support the divergence of Palmophyllophyceae before the Chlorophyta and Streptophyta.

In this paper, Li et al. (2020) sequenced the nuclear genome of CCMP 1413 Prasinoderma coloniale. The paper discusses their analysis and the characteristics present within P. coloniale. The genome revealed both ancestral and derived characteristics that place P. coloniale at an equal evolutionary distance from either the Chlorophyta or Streptophyta lineages. The new phylum Prasinodermophyta, was established and divided into two classes: Prasinodermophyceae and Palmophyllophyceae emend. This new phylum represents the earliest evolutionary divergence within the Viridiplantae, prior to the Chlorophyta and Stretophyta divergence.