PhytoREF : a reference database of the plastidial 16S rRNA gene of photosynthetic eukaryotes with curated taxonomy

The PhytoREF data- base that contains plastidial 16S rDNA reference sequences that originate from a large diversity of eukaryotes representing all known major photosynthetic lineages. Stringent quality filtering and a phylogeny-based taxonomic classifica- tion were applied for each 16S rDNA sequence. The database mainly focuses on marine microalgae, but sequences from land plants (representing half of the PhytoREF sequences) and freshwater taxa were also included to broaden the applicability of PhytoREF to different aquatic and terrestrial habitats.
PhytoREF is a new resource in molecular ecology to foster the discovery, assessment and monitoring of the diversity of photosynthetic eukaryotes using high-throughput sequencing.