Quantity in Search of Quality: Los Alamos National Laboratory Makes a Case for Improving Algae Genome Data

by Sheila Van Cuyk (U.S. Department of Energy) The potential for advancing algal biofuels and bioproducts relies on using algae strains that are best suited for industrial production. Genomic sequence data—the functional information in the DNA of a specific organism such as algae—can reveal the genes and regulatory mechanisms that control how a given strain grows and responds to stress. By screening genomes from a vast array of diverse algae, scientists can unlock the secrets of how to cultivate rapidly growing, high-quality strain compositions. High-quality genomes include no gaps in their sequence and accurately reflect all of the DNA in the strain.

The importance of genomic information to optimize biomanufacturing, a process that uses the growth of plants and/or micro-organisms (e.g., algae, yeast, or bacteria) to create bioproducts, is well known and widely accepted. However, analyses by scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) suggest that, as the availability of algae genomes expands, the data about novel algae genome sequences is becoming increasingly unreliable and may leave out critical information about the strains’ DNA. Although there are more algae sequences available now than ever before, the quality of the genomic data published in literature is increasingly inconsistent and full of gaps and mistakes. This lack of quality can misrepresent what genes—and functions—are available in a given species.