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1. Chlamydomonas

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.05.039  

   Tulin, Frej; Clark-Cotton, Manuella R; Onishi, Masayuki (July 2024, Current Biology)

   Tulin et al. introduce Chlamydomonas, a unicellular green alga commonly used as a microbial reference system for plants and animals. 

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2. Assembly and Repair of Photosystem II in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

   https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13060811  

   Mehra, Himanshu S; Wang, Xiaozhuo; Russell, Brandon P; Kulkarni, Nidhi; Ferrari, Nicholas; Larson, Brent; Vinyard, David J (March 2024, Plants)

   Oxygenic photosynthetic organisms use Photosystem II (PSII) to oxidize water and reduce plastoquinone. Here, we review the mechanisms by which PSII is assembled and turned over in the model green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This species has been used to make key discoveries in PSII research due to its metabolic flexibility and amenability to genetic approaches. PSII subunits originate from both nuclear and chloroplastic gene products in Chlamydomonas. Nuclear-encoded PSII subunits are transported into the chloroplast and chloroplast-encoded PSII subunits are translated by a coordinated mechanism. Active PSII dimers are built from discrete reaction center complexes in a process facilitated by assembly factors. The phosphorylation of core subunits affects supercomplex formation and localization within the thylakoid network. Proteolysis primarily targets the D1 subunit, which when replaced, allows PSII to be reactivated and completes a repair cycle. While PSII has been extensively studied using Chlamydomonas as a model species, important questions remain about its assembly and repair which are presented here. 

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3. Phosphorus Availability Regulates TORC1 Signaling via LST8 in Chlamydomonas

   https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00179  

   Couso, Inmaculada; Pérez-Pérez, María Esther; Ford, Megan M.; Martínez-Force, Enrique; Hicks, Leslie M.; Umen, James G.; Crespo, José L. (November 2019, The Plant Cell)
4. Validation of “Chlamydomonas priscui” (“Chlamydomonas sp. UWO241”; Chlamydomonadaceae, Chlorophyceae), a psychrophilic organism from the Antarctic widely used in research on cold adaptation of photosynthesis

   Morgan-Kiss, R M; Guiry, M (August 2024, Notulae algarum)
5. Cleavage-furrow formation without F-actin in Chlamydomonas

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1920337117  

   Onishi, Masayuki; Umen, James_G; Cross, Frederick_R; Pringle, John_R (July 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Significance Studies of eukaryotic cell division have focused on the actomyosin ring, whose filaments of F-actin and myosin-II are hypothesized to generate the contractile force for ingression of the cleavage furrow. However, myosin-II has a very limited taxonomic distribution, whereas division by furrowing is much more widespread. We used the green algaChlamydomonas reinhardtiito investigate how a furrow can form without myosin-II and the potential roles of F-actin in this process. Although F-actin was associated with ingressing furrows, its complete removal only modestly delayed furrowing, suggesting that an actin-independent mechanism (possibly involving microtubules) drives furrow ingression. Such a mechanism presumably emerged early in eukaryotic evolution and may still underlie cell division in a diverse range of modern species. 

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