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Death of Prorocentrum donghaiense may be a programmed autolysis

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Abstract

Prorocentrum donghaiense, one of the dinoflagellate, has continuously caused large scale red tides along the Chinese coast in recent years. These red tides have brought tremendous loss to the local economy and serious impacts to the local environment. Unfortunately, little was known about the mechanism of the fast appearance and extinction of the red tide caused by this alga. In this study, the full-length cDNA of a caspase encoding gene of P. donghaiense was cloned and characterized, and the transcription of this gene during the senescence of the alga was semi-quantitatively determined. The cDNA was 520 bp in length. It contained a 258 bp open reading frame (ORF) which encoded a peptide of 85 amino acids. The amount of transcripts of the caspase encoding gene increased with the senescence of P. donghaiense and started to decrease gradually when the autolysis of P. donghaiense cells took place. We proposed that the death of P. donghaiense may be a caspase mediated programmed autolysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Marine Life Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, P. R. China

    Guanpin Yang, Yongjian Liu & Bingjun Li

  2. College of Oceanography, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, P. R. China

    Bingjun Li

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  1. Guanpin Yang
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  2. Yongjian Liu
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Correspondence to Guanpin Yang.

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Yang, G., Liu, Y. & Li, B. Death of Prorocentrum donghaiense may be a programmed autolysis. J. Ocean Univ. China 7, 276–280 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-008-0276-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-008-0276-x

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