Microbiology. Seeing green and red in diatom genomes.
The genomes of eukaryotes, particularly algae, are providing more and more evidence for the workings of endosymbiosis, an evolutionary source of complex cell organization where one cell (the symbiont) comes to live within another (the host). Some of that evidence is expected, but other evolutionary findings emerging from genomes are unanticipated. On page 1724 of this issue, Moustafa et al. ( 1 ) uncover such an evolutionary surprise from diatom genomes. The results are likely to be controversial.