Green plants (green algae and land plants), Glaucophyta and red algae are primary plastid-containing photosynthetic eukaryotes.
If EFL invaded green algae multiple times, the green algal EFLs will not form a single well-supported clade.
Generally, chloroplasts and mitochondria in green algae have multiple copies of a single type of circular genome.
The complex distribution of EFL and EF-1α could have arisen from multiple transfers of EFL to green algae, reversions by re-introduction of EF-1α, or an extended period of time where both genes co-existed in the same ancestral lineage followed by differential loss in the descendants of this lineage.
In this model, the ancestor OPR contained 10 or more introns, symmetrically distributed throughout the coding sequence of OPR, and multiple unique introns were lost during the evolutionary process from green algae to angiosperms.
In land plants, major LHCII proteins are encoded by multiple Lhcb1, Lhcb2 and Lhcb3 genes [ 48], but in green algae, the major LHCII proteins encoded by Lhcbm genes showed great diversity [ 48- 51].
There are multiple possibilities to increase productivity and to make the production of green algae on site more sustainable.
The biochemistry, physical interactions and molecular phylogeny of multiple types of LHCs have been characterized in plants and chlorophytes (green algae) [ 2- 4], but less is known about homologs in Chl c-containing algae.
We discovered that each species harbors genes encoding MDL proteins, with typically multiple copies (paralogs) present per species, except the non-vascular plants (green algae and the moss), which encode a single MDF protein each (Table 2).
Although known genes required for the synthesis of G and S lignins were mostly absent outside of land plants, homologs of those needed for making the monomer of the simplest form, p-coumaryl alcohol (H monolignol), were found in green algae, red algae and glaucophytes, as well as multiple organisms in supergroups other than Archaeplastida.
