EEB Faculty Index

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Earth & Marine Sciences A308
Phone: 831.459.5358
Fax: 831.459.5353
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LYNDA J. GOFF Professor of EEBiology Vice Provost & Dean of Undergraduate Education B.S., Western Oregon State College Ph.D., University of British Columbia GOFF LAB

Physical Science Building 208 University of California Santa Cruz, CA 95064 phone 831.459.5114 fax 831.459.5353 goff@biology.ucsc.edu office hours

Cell-Cell and Genome Interaction in Algae and the Evolution of Parasitism

The research in our laboratory employs algae as experimental systems to examine several questions in cell as well as developmental and evolutionary biology. For example, we have been investigating how parasites interact with their specific hosts in highly host-specific biotrophic parasitism. We want to determine precisely how parasites elicit the proper physiological and cell biological responses in their hosts that result in the success or failure of parasitism. While investigating the many examples of host-parasite associations in the marine red algae, we discovered that these parasites interact with their hosts by injecting their entire nuclear genome into the cytoplasm of the host. These parasite nuclei divide in the host cell and induce the host cell to undergo developmental processes that transfer parasite nuclei to adjacent host cells. In this way, a parasite, reduced to its genomic DNA, is spread internally throughout host cells. These infected host cells are transformed genetically and eventually package and distribute the parasite nuclei into spores, which are dispersed. This is the first known case of the direct exchange of genomic DNA between different species in host-parasite interactions. Currently, we are using these systems to explore questions of nuclear genome-genome interactions in the host and parasite and to discover what role, if any, the organelle DNA of the parasite plays in this parasitism. We have been comparing the plastid and nuclear genomes of hosts and parasites (via restriction enzyme mapping and sequencing) to determine what, if any, evolutionary connection there might be between parasites and hosts. We are also developing host and parasite gene probes, which we will use in situ hybridization studies of the genome interactions. In addition, we are examining the interaction of the nuclear plastid and mitochondrial genomes in algae, and we are beginning research to examine the role of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of symbioses.

Marine Biotechnology

Our molecular biological studies of red algae have also revealed that many red algae harbor large numbers of small (0.8*8kb), supercoiled plasmids that are species specific and transcriptionally active. We are cloning and sequencing many of these, and we are attempting to develop one plasmid as a shuttle vector to deliver genes into other red algae, particularly into the economically important agar-and carrageenin-producing red algae and into nori (Porphyra).

Selected Publications

Goff, L.J., Ashen, J., and Moon, D.A. 1997. The evolution of parasites from their hosts: A case study in the parasitic red algae. Evolution 51: 1068-1078.

Moon, D.A., and Goff, L.J. 1997. Molecular characterization of two large DNA plasmids in the red alga Porphyra pulchra. Current Genetics 32: 132-138.

Stache-Crain, B., Muller, D., and Goff, L.J. 1997. Molecular systematics of brown algae Ectocarpus and Kuckuckia inferred from phylogenetic analyses of nuclear and plastid encoded genes. J. Phycology 32: 297-312.

Ashen, J.B., and Goff, L.J. 1996. Molecular identification of a bacterium associated with gall formation in the marine red alga Prionitis lanceolata. J. Phycology 32: 286-297.

Lang, B.F., Goff, L.J., and Gray, M.W. 1996. A 5S rRNA gene is present in the mitochrondrial genome of the protist Reclinomonas americana but is absent from red algal mitochrondrial DNA. J. Molecular Biology 261: 607-613.

Goff, L.J., and Coleman, A.W. 1995. The fate of parasite and host organelle DNA during cellular transformation of red algae by their parasites. Plant Cell 7: 1899-1911.

Maguire, M.J., Goff, L.J., and Coleman, A.W. 1995. In situ plastid and mitochrondrial DNA determination; implication of the observed minimal plastid genomenumber. American J. Bot. 82: 1496-1506.

Nishiguchi, M., and Goff, L.J. 1995. Isolation, purification and characterization of dimethylpropiothetin dethiomethylase (4.4.1.3.) frm the red alga, Polysiphonia paniculata. J. Phycology 321: 567-574.

Garman, G.D., Pillai, M.C., Goff, L.J., and Cherr, G.N. 1994. Nuclear events during early development of Macrocystis pyrifera gametophytes and temporal effects of a marine contaminant. Marine Biology 121: 355-362.