Pinguiococcus pyrenoidosus
Courtesy of CCMP
| Name | Pinguiococcus pyrenoidosus |
| Class | Pinguiophyceae, NCBI Taxonomy |
| Size |
Length: 3 - 10 µm Width: 3 - 8 µm |
| Morphology | Unicellular, coccoid |
| Toxic |
No |
| Regime | North Atlantic |
| Strain Source | CCMP2188 |
Pinguiococcus pyrenoidosus (Pinguiophyceae) is a yellow-brown alga in the heterokont (aka stramenochromes) group. It is the only identified species of the genus. It is small coccoid marine alga with a single chloroplast having a typical photosynthetic stramenopile ultrastructure and vacuoles cotaning a large percentage of eicosapentaenoic acid.
Its pigmentation and plastid ultrastructure, flagellar apparatus and small-subunit rRNA (SSU rRNA) have been well characterized in order to determine its phylogenetic position and relationship to the different groups of algae, and in particular its relationship among the different classes of heterokont algae. Little is known about its chloroplast genome.