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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Nov 1.
Published in final edited form as: Plant Cell Environ. 2017 May 11;40(11):2558–2570. doi: 10.1111/pce.12943

Table 1.

Representative photoreceptors in eukaryotic algae

Photoreceptor classes Chromophore Domain composition Representative algae Reference
Phytochrome Bilins PAS-GAF-PHY-(PAS)2-HKD-REC Micromonas pusilla Duanmu et al. 2014
PAS-GAF-PHY-PAS-HKD-REC Cyanophora paradoxa Duanmu et al. 2014
PAS-GAF-PHY-PAS-PKC-RING Guillardia theta Duanmu et al. 2014
PAS-GAF-PHY-HKD-REC Thalassiosira pseudonana Fortunato et al. 2016

Cryptochrome FAD+MTHF(?) Cry-DASH: PHR Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Beel et al. 2012
FAD+MTHF (?) Plant Cry: PHR-DAS Coccomyxa subellipsoidea Fortunato et al. 2015
FAD+MTHF Plant Cry-like: dAS-PHR Coccomyxa subellipsoidea Fortunato et al. 2015

Phototropin FMN LOV-LOV-STKD Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Huang & Beck 2003

BLUF-protein FMN Aureochrome: bZIP-LOV Vaucheria frigida Takahashi et al. 2007
Bilin+FMN(?) Neochrome: PHY-LOV-LOV-STKD Mougeotia scalaris Suetsugu et al. 2005
FAD PAC: BLUF-AC-BLUF-AC Euglena gracilis Iseki et al. 2002

Rhodopsin Retinal Channelrhodopsin: Rh/ChR-Reg.domain Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Nagel et al. 2002
Enzymerhodopsin: Rh-HisK-REC-AC/GC Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Kateriya et al. 2004
Light driven ion pump: Rh/AR Acetabularia acetabulum Tsunoda et al. 2006

UVR8 Trp (RCC1)7 Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Tilbrook et al. 2016

Representative photoreceptor classes and the domain composition according to the Pfam database (due to space limit, not all characterized algal photoreceptors are included in this table). Domain abbreviations are: AC/GC, adenylyl or guanylyl cyclase; AR, Acetabularia rhodopsins; BLUF, blue-light sensors using flavin adenine dinucleotide; bZIP, basic region/leucine zipper; CCE, cryptochrome C-terminal extension; ChR, channelrhodopsin; Cry-DASH, cryptochrome of Drosophila, Arabidopsis, Synechococcus, Homo; DAS: DQXVP Acidic STAESS motif; dAS, refers to a DAS motif missing the DQXVP; FAD, flavin adenine dinucleotide; FMN, flavin mononucleotide; GAF, cGMP-specific phosphodiesterases, adenylyl cyclases and FhlA; HisK, histidine kinase; HKD, Histidine Kinase A domain and H-ATPase-c domain; LOV, light-oxygen-voltage; MTHF: 5-methenyltetrahydrofolate; PAC, photoactivated adenylyl cyclase; PAS, Period-Arnt-Sim domain; PHY, phytochrome photosensory domain; PHR, photolyase homology region; RCC1, regulator of chromosome condensation repeat 1; REC, response regulator receiver; Reg.domain, regulatory domain; Rh, rhodopsin; RING, really interesting new gene; STKD, serine/threonine kinase domain; Trp, tryptophan; UVR8, Ultraviolet Resistance Locus 8.