Chlamydomonas is a unicellular eukaryotic green alga. It serves as a powerful model system for studying a broad range of fundamental processes including the biology of chloroplasts, photosynthesis, cilia/flagella, eyespots, and algal lipid accumulation. More information about Chlamydomonas and related resources can be found on the Chlamydomonas Resource Center website.
Warning! The strain you receive may not be the strain you think it is! The indicated gene is not disrupted in 25% of the strains, due to the messiness of Chlamydomonas insertion sites. Additionally, there is always a chance that strains have been mixed up during handling. Before using any strain, users are urged to 1) Streak each strain to single colonies and 2) Validate the insertion site by PCR and sequencing of the insertion locus as described in the check-PCR instructions. A copy of the appropriate background strain (CC-4533 or CC-5415) will be sent with every CLiP mutant order.
For a full description of how the strains were made, please see Li et al 2016 for the LMJ.SG0182 series mutants, Li et al 2019 for the LMJ.RY0402 series mutants, and Lunardon et al 2024 for the CLIP2 series mutants. Briefly, the LMJ mutants were generated by random insertion of a paromomycin resistance cassette, and the CLIP2 mutants by random insertion of a hygromycin resistance cassette. Most mutants have one insertion, but some have more. Insertion sites are messy, with frequent cassette truncation and short insertions of genomic DNA between the cassette and the flanking genomic DNA leading to decreased mapping accuracy. We attempted to obtain flanking sequences from each side of the cassette in each mutant. Each strain may have multiple flanking sequences, which may or may not originate from the same insertion.