Naegleria genome sequenced!!!

Holy crap. Just...WOW! A PHYLOGENY IN CELL! o_O

...and PROTISTS IN CELL!

Lemme sit down and get over the shock a little...

Ok, calmed down enough to type. Wow. That was breathtaking... the protist gods seem to be smiling upon me today!

(We've made jokes before about the impossibility of there ever being any phylogenies in Cell, as the developmental/molecular cell biology folk generally don't have the slightest clue about evolution, or even how their favourite model organisms are related. And when challenged on that, retort that evolutionary history is "irrelevant" to their work. I'm not making that up, sadly...)

Ok, now the next wave of awesome pleasant shockage: Remeber Naegleria(also here =D) and its amazing ability to transform between amoeboid and flagellate forms? Towards the bottom, note my moaning about the need to Naegleria to be developed as a model, that is, a need for someone to get its ass sequenced. Or genome anyway. Little did I know, people were already working on getting that sorted!

Fritz-Laylin et al. 2010 Cell The Genome of Naegleria gruberi illuminates early eukaryotic versatility

Also, remember my failed attempts at trying to figure out the whole amoeboid-flagellate cell type business? From the abstract: "Moreover, we construct a comprehensive catalog of amoeboid-motility genes." I can't wait to read this paper...

So I could print it now, or wait for my [free!] print subscription to show up in a few weeks or so. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. Saving resources vs. satisfying the greedy desire to devour this paper at this very moment... anyway, I'm going to wait until I actually have the time to read random papers and oogle at trees and genomes. Right now, must finish a poster and a talk (different topics) for upcoming small undergrad conference this Saturday.