Ulva: An emerging green seaweed model for systems biology

Abstract

Green seaweeds exhibit a wide range of morphologies and occupy various ecological niches, spanning from freshwater to marine and terrestrial habitats. These organisms, which predominantly belong to the class Ulvophyceae, showcase a remarkable instance of parallel evolution toward complex multicellularity and macroscopic thalli in the Viridiplantae lineage. Within the green seaweeds, several Ulva species ("sea lettuce") are model organisms for studying carbon assimilation, interactions with bacteria, life cycle progression, and morphogenesis. Ulva species are also notorious for their fast growth and capacity to dominate nutrient-rich, anthropogenically disturbed coastal ecosystems during "green tide" blooms. From an economic perspective, Ulva has garnered increasing attention as a promising feedstock for the production of food, feed, and biobased products, also as a means of removing excess nutrients from the environment. We propose that Ulva is poised to further develop as a model in green seaweed research. In this perspective, we focus explicitly on Ulva mutabilis/compressa as a model species and highlight the molecular data and tools that are currently available or in development. We discuss several areas that will benefit from future research or where exciting new developments have been reported in other Ulva species.

Algal growth and morphogenesis-promoting factors released by cold-adapted bacteria contribute to the resilience and morphogenesis of the seaweedUlva(Chlorophyta) in Antarctica (Potter Cove)

“…strain MS2 and Maribacter sp. strain MS6) (Wichard 2015;Blomme et al 2023). Without the bacteria, the gametes of U. mutabilis develop into a callus-like biomass characterized by slow growth, atypical cell wall formation with protrusions, and a lack of thalli and rhizoids (Spoerner et al 2012;Grueneberg et al 2016).…”