Authors
Usha Farey Lingappa, Sunnyjoy Dupuis Borrego, Eve Sequoia Sindermann, Jude Lange Edwards, Lauren Tzu En Chiang, Jordan L Chastain, Charles Perrino, Rory J Craig, Carrie D Nicora, Samuel O Purvine, Sabeeha S Merchant
Published in
The ISME journal. Jul 28, 2026. Epub Jul 28, 2026.
Abstract
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga long studied as a biological model system but rarely considered from the perspective of its own ecology, thus epitomizing the disconnection between reductionist biology in the laboratory and life in nature. Here we present insights into its ecology understood from field strains. We examined bacterial communities that coenriched with C. reinhardtii from the field, revealing specific associations. We then compared the biology of C. reinhardtii field strains to laboratory strains, illuminating strain level heterogeneity and adaptations to life in the field vs. laboratory. Field strains exhibited more robust photosynthesis, higher abundances of pherophorin proteins, a propensity for pallmeloid formation, and high cell wall permeability. Finally, we phenotyped cocultures of C. reinhardtii with a coenriched bacterial partner, demonstrating how differences between field and laboratory strains manifest in biotic interactions. Although the organisms in question are classically understood as unicellular, our observations of field strains highlighted their participation in multicellular units, challenging the utility of unicellular frameworks in extending our knowledge of model organism biology in the laboratory towards understanding microbial ecology.
PMID:
42520245
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 29 Jul 2026.
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