Dryland biodiversity of green algae: draft genome sequence of two desert microalgae from New South Wales.

Drylands, regions with an aridity index of less than 0.65, cover about 41% of the Earth's surface. Despite the extreme environmental conditions found in these ecosystems, drylands are colonized by highly diverse microbial communities. Green microalgae are fundamental components of these microbial communities and play a pivotal role in primary production. They also produce valuable metabolites to cope with environmental stressors, making them good candidates for biotechnological exploitation. Despite this, phototrophic unicellular green algae are a vastly understudied component of dryland soil microbial communities. Based on a previous screening of 23 soil samples from 14 countries collected as part of the BIODESERT project, this thesis focuses on two Chlorophyta strains cultivated and isolated from the soil samples collected in New South Wales, Australia. These strains belong to the genera Tetradesmus and Leptosira. In this project I generated draft genomes for both strains using the NovaSeq X Plus platform. This study represents a first step towards the construction of a genomic library of representative strains of green algae isolated from desert soils worldwide.