Salt evaporation ponds formed by salt water impounded within levees in former tidelands on the shores of San Francisco Bay. The red color in these ponds is from Dunaliella salina. Photo by Doc Searls [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The genome sequence and gene models of Dunaliella salina were downloaded from Phytozome, on May 3, 2018. Please note that this copy of the genome is not maintained and is therefore not automatically updated. The latest data is available at Phytozome.

The following text is from NCBI BioProjects: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/10713

Dunaliella salina

Dunaliella salina is a unicellular, biflagellate green alga belonging to family Chlorophyceae. It lacks a rigid cell wall and contains a single large chloroplast. It is tolerant to high salt concentrations in its environment and accumulates large amounts of carotenoids, including beta-carotene, under certain conditions of high salinity, light intensity or temperature. D. salina has therefore become an important crop for the health food market for the commercial production of natural beta-carotene. Adaptability to increased salt concentration in its environment is due to increased glycerol synthesis by D. salina.