Genomic Analysis of Organismal Complexity in the Multicellular Green Alga Volvox carteri

Abstract

Going Multicellular: The volvocine algae include both the unicellular Chlamydomonas and the multicellular Volvox , which diverged from one another 50 to 200 million years ago. Prochnik et al. (p. 223 ) compared the Volvox genome with that of Chlamydomonas to identify any genomic innovations that might have been associated with the transition to multicellularity. Size changes were observed in several protein families in Volvox , but, overall, the Volvox genome and predicted proteome were highly similar to those of Chlamydomonas . Thus, biological complexity can arise without major changes in genome content or protein domains.