The rise and fall of Picobiliphytes: How assumed autotrophs turned out to be heterotrophs

Algae are significant members of Earth's biodiversity. Having been studied for a long time, the discovery of new algal phyla is extremely unusual. Recently, the enigmatic Picobiliphyta, a group of uncultured eukaryotes unveiled using molecular tools, were claimed to represent an unrecognized early branching algal lineage with a nucleomorph (remnant nucleus of a secondary algal endosymbiont) in their plastids. However, subsequent studies rejected the presence of a nucleomorph, and single-cell genomic studies failed to detect any plastid-related genes, ruling out the possibility of plastid occurrence. The isolation of the first picobiliphyte, Picomonas judraskeda, a tiny organism that feeds on very small (<150nm) organic particles, came as final proof of their non-photosynthetic lifestyle. Consequently, the group has been renamed Picozoa. The passage from picobiliphytes to picozoa illustrates the crucial role that classical protistology should play to provide sound biological context for the wealth of data produced by modern molecular techniques.