Dear colleagues,
This is to inform the Chlamy community in general that
the Graham Bell lab at McGill has recently isolated at least
four new strains of C. reinhardtii from soil samples taken
from agricultural fields outside Montreal, and that these new
strains (provisionally named LEE-1, LEE-1, LEE-3 and LEE-4)
will be sent this week to the Chlamy Genetics Center at
Duke, where they will be available from Elizabeth Harris.
The strains mate readily with lab strains (2 are mt-, 2 are
mt+), and produce viable zygotes. We compared them with
known lab strains (CC-1010, CC-1952, CC-2342, CC-2343, CC-2344)
by allozyme electrophoresis and Southern blot hybridization
with the transposons Gulliver and TOC1. Based on our results,
the new isolates are genetically distinct from all lab strains,
and from each other, so they should be a good source of
polymorphisms. We also have a few dozen other colonies which,
based on mating trials, appear to be reinhardtii isolates.
We have sent a manuscript to J. Phycology describing these
strains and our methods for isolating them, which permit
efficient screening of many soil samples. Hope this is
of interest.
Cliff Zeyl
B7JM at MUSICB.MCGILL.CA
