Data for: Photosystems in the eye-like organelles of heterotrophic warnowiid dinoflagellates

We show that the heterotrophic members of this group have retained and express components of the ancestral photosynthetic mechanism, seemingly without photosystem II and RuBisCo. Our findings suggest that the ocelloid retinal body has repurposed the remaining photosystem to perform a function other than photosynthesis.

Methods

Cells of interest were isolated using a microcapillary pipet and placed into lysis buffer. cDNA extraction was performed according to SmartSeqII (Picelli et al. 2014). Libraries were prepared at the Sequencing and Bioinformatics Consortium, University of British Columbia, and sequenced on the Nextseq platform.