Heterosigma akashiwo has been reported as red-tide causing phytoplankton in the Korean coastal area during summer when they are exposed to high light. It also shows photosynthetic adaptability to strong light during culture in the laboratory.
On the basis of these observations, we tried to find out some genes specifically expressed in Heterosimga akashiwo during exposure to high light, assuming that they might have some resistant mechanisms associated with light adaptation.
For this purpose, we carried out DD-PCR to detect differentially expressed mRNAs from cells that had been illuminated under high light for 3 days.
We found eight cDNA clones that had been expressed specificically for high light.
When they were further screened by reverse Northern hybridization, three of them were identified to be positive cDNA clones.
When these cDNA fragments were subjected to DNA sequencing and then their base sequences were compared to GenBank database, one of them showed sequence homology 86% identical to the partial sequence of 16S rRNA gene of eubacterium CRO-18.