This shorter episode is about a tiny, single-celled alga – Chlamydomonas reinhardtii – that’s managed to have a big impact. UC Berkeley plant biologist Sabeeha Merchant explains why she works on this alga, how researchers managed to sequence its genome, and what it has to teach us about other organisms – like plants. 

Links from this episode

• Episode Transcript
• JGI@25: The Little Alga That Could
• Chlamydomonas reinhardtii on Phytozome and PhycoCosm 
• JGI Blog Post: Green Algae Reveal One mRNA Encodes Many Proteins
• JGI News Release: Green Alga Genome Project Catalogs Carbon Capture Machinery and Reveals Identity as Ancient Cousin of Land Plants and Animals
• The original sequence: Science

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