''Amphidinium carterae'' is a species of dinoflagellates. It was first described by Edward M. Hulburt in 1957, and was named in honour of the British phycologist Nellie Carter-Montford. The type locality is Great Pond,

Barnstable County, Massachusetts Barnstable County is a county located in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the population was 228,996. Its shire town is Barnstable. The county consists of Cape Cod and associated islands (some adjacent islands are in Duke ...

, USA. Some strains of this species are considered as toxic (against fungi, for example).

Distribution

''Amphidinium carterae'' is known from both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Bay of Fundy, the Gulf of Mexico, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It also occurs in Brazil and New Zealand. It is found in shallow waters in coastal bays and estuaries.

Ecology

''Amphidinium carterae'' is a species that sometimes causes algal blooms. In laboratory, the presence of a lysate of an ''A. carterae'' strain affects the embryonic development of sea urchins.

Use in research

''Amphidinium carterae'' is a photosynthetic organism and can be cultured in the laboratory under suitable conditions of temperature and light. It is a

peridinin Peridinin is a light-harvesting apocarotenoid, a pigment associated with chlorophyll and found in the peridinin-chlorophyll-protein (PCP) light-harvesting complex in dinoflagellates, best studied in '' Amphidinium carterae''. Biological signif ...

-containing dinoflagellate, and has been used as a model organism for research. It has a highly unusual chloroplast

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

with genes mounted on many small minicircle elements, and an unusual pattern of

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...

metabolism.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q20685874 Species described in 1957 Gymnodiniales Symbiosis