Origin and Evolution of the Canal Raphe System in Diatoms

One lineage of pennate diatoms has a slit through the siliceous cell wall, called a “raphe,” that functions in motility. Raphid pennate diatoms number in the perhaps tens of thousands of species, with the diversity of raphe forms potentially matching this number. Three lineages—the Bacillariales, Rhopalodiales, and Surirellales—possess a complex and presumably highly derived raphe that is physically separated from the cell interior, most often by a set of siliceous braces. Because the relationship among these three lineages is unclear, the number of origins of the canal raphe system and the homology of it and its constitutive parts among these lineages, is equally unclear. We reconstructed the phylogeny of raphid pennate diatoms and included, for the first time, members of all three canal raphid diatom lineages, and used the phylogeny to test specific hypotheses about the origin of the canal raphe. The canal raphe appears to have evolved twice, once in the common ancestor of Bacillariales and once in the common ancestor of Rhopalodiales and Surirellales, which form a monophyletic group in our analyses. These results recommend careful follow-up morphogenesis studies of the canal raphe in these two lineages to determine the underlying developmental basis for this remarkable case of parallel evolution.