Earlham Institute-Led International Research Project Aims to Unlock Protist Genomics for Biomanufacturing, Agriculture and Environmental Applications

Scientists at SAMS’ Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa will be central to the research effort

(IN BRIEF) The Earlham Institute is leading a new international collaboration with the Scottish Association for Marine Science, the Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa and Aalborg University to overcome major technical barriers in protist genomics. Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the project will develop and optimise methods for sequencing protists from laboratory cultures and individual cells collected directly from the environment. Protists represent a major proportion of eukaryotic diversity and perform critical ecological functions, including producing around 50% of the world’s oxygen, but their extreme biological diversity makes cultivation, DNA extraction and sequencing particularly difficult. Researchers will initially work across ten major protist classes, comparing methods for cell lysis, DNA extraction and amplification before scaling successful approaches. CCAP and SAMS will provide diverse cultures, including a research collection covering more than 50 genera from poorly understood evolutionary groups. Earlham Institute will contribute short- and long-read and single-cell sequencing expertise, while Aalborg University will help develop environmental single-cell workflows. The research could support future applications in biomanufacturing, sustainable agriculture, environmental science and biodiversity research.

(PRESS RELEASE) OBAN, 15-Sep-2026 — /EuropaWire/ — A new international research collaboration led by the Earlham Institute is seeking to overcome major technical barriers in protist genomics, opening the way for wider scientific and industrial applications spanning biomanufacturing, sustainable agriculture and environmental research.

The project brings together the Earlham Institute in Norwich with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), the Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP) and Aalborg University in Denmark, combining expertise in protist cultivation, single-cell genomics and long-read DNA sequencing.

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the initiative will address technical bottlenecks involved in sequencing protists both from laboratory cultures and from individual cells isolated directly from natural environments.

Protists represent an exceptionally diverse group of eukaryotic organisms but remain comparatively poorly classified and studied. Researchers say their biological diversity makes them scientifically valuable while also creating significant difficulties for conventional genomic techniques.

Professor Neil Hall, Director of the Earlham Institute, said protists represent the largest share of eukaryotic diversity, yet much of that diversity remains poorly understood. He said researchers have already made progress in solving some of the technical challenges facing the field, but further work is needed to scale those approaches if a major part of global biodiversity is not to remain overlooked.

Protists perform essential functions across ecosystems. Photosynthetic protists, particularly algae, are responsible for producing around 50% of the world’s oxygen, while many other protists feed on microorganisms, helping regulate microbiomes and maintain ecosystem health.

Some species can also have significant negative impacts. Protists include organisms responsible for diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness, while certain species can contribute to harmful algal blooms capable of damaging marine ecosystems.

Their extraordinary biological diversity is one of the principal reasons they remain difficult to study. Protists vary considerably in cell structure, chemical composition, genomes and evolutionary history, creating challenges for cultivation, cell disruption, DNA extraction, sequencing and genomic analysis.

The Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa, housed at SAMS, maintains one of the world’s largest and most taxonomically diverse collections of protist cultures. The collection will provide stable representatives of important protist lineages, enabling researchers to generate sufficient biomass, enrich target organisms and test cultivation and sequencing techniques across a wide range of species.

SAMS will also contribute expertise in ecologically informed cultivation methods designed around how protists behave and survive in their natural environments.

Dr David Green, Principal Investigator in Molecular Microbiology at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, said the research will benefit not only from the established CCAP collection but also from a new cultivation approach developed by SAMS researcher Dr Frederik De Boever.

That work has resulted in a distinctive research collection containing more than 50 genera from some of the least understood protist groups, including Provora, centrohelids, telonemids, rhodelphids, kathablepharids and heterotrophic Paulinella.

Green said the combination of the CCAP and SAMS collections provides researchers with exceptionally broad evolutionary coverage, creating opportunities to investigate how diverse protists evolved, how they function and how their biological characteristics differ across major lineages.

The project will initially focus on ten major classes of protists before expanding its scope. Researchers will compare existing methods across species and systematically evaluate protocols for key steps including cell lysis, DNA extraction and DNA amplification.

This work is intended to identify which approaches perform reliably across different protist groups and where species-specific techniques are required.

The Earlham Institute will contribute experience in sequencing non-model organisms and protists, including previous studies that have uncovered previously unknown biological diversity, unusual evolutionary characteristics and species harbouring previously unidentified Legionella bacteria.

Its researchers will use scalable short- and long-read sequencing technologies, alongside single-cell sequencing and genomic analysis, to help improve the reliability and efficiency of protist genome generation.

A major area of collaboration between the Earlham Institute and SAMS will be the optimisation of cell lysis and DNA extraction, identified as one of the key technical bottlenecks limiting progress in protist genomics.

The researchers will also work with Aalborg University to develop single-cell sequencing workflows capable of analysing protists collected directly from environmental samples rather than relying exclusively on organisms that can be maintained successfully in laboratory culture.

Improved single-cell approaches could allow scientists to study a much wider proportion of protist diversity, including species that are difficult or impossible to cultivate using existing methods.

By developing more reliable and scalable genomic workflows, the collaboration aims to provide the wider research community with tools that can reveal previously inaccessible areas of protist biology.

Better genomic understanding could ultimately support the discovery of new biological pathways, enzymes, metabolites and cellular processes with potential applications in areas including industrial biotechnology, agriculture and environmental monitoring.

The project also aims to improve understanding of protists’ roles in ecosystems and evolutionary history, helping scientists investigate organisms that account for a major proportion of eukaryotic diversity but remain underrepresented in genomic databases.

Through the combined resources of major culture collections, advanced sequencing platforms and international expertise, the research partnership hopes to establish methods that can be used more widely across the global protist research community and significantly expand the range of organisms accessible to modern genomics.

Media Contact:

Euan Paterson
Communications and Media Officer
Euan.Paterson@sams.ac.uk
01631 559342 (direct dial)
07827 963984 (mobile)
01631 559000 (switchboard)

SOURCE: Scottish Association for Marine Science