1994 The Organelle Genome Megasequencing Program (OGMP) consults with Charley O'Kelly from which protists to sequence mtDNA. Among the little-known Euglenozoa, Diplonema papillatum is one of the selected species. After sequencing ~25 kbp of a random mtDNA library, no gene was found and D. papillatum was put on ice. Aug 1998 at the ISEP meeting in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, GB invites JL to find out where the mitochondrial genes of Diplonema papillatum might hide. Sep 2001 William Marande starts in GB's lab his PhD project on the mitochondrial genome of D. papillatum Jun 2002 First poster presentation "Characterization of the mitochondrial DNA of Diplonema papillatum." (Marande W*, Tremblay D, Lukes J, Burger G) FIRST INSTANCE OF APPENDAGE RNA EDITING DETECTED IN MITOS Jun 2007 William defends successfully his thesis Aug 2007 Georgette Kiethega starts her PhD on Diplonema mitochondrial gene fragmentation 2008 JL arranges the sequencing of the entire Diplonema genome by C. Vlcek at the Inst Mol Genet, Czech Acad Sci, Prag Feb 2009 First genome sequences obtained (50 Gbp 454 reads) Apr 2009 Sandrine Moreira starts her PhD project in GB's lab on the assembly and annotation of the D. papillatum nuclear genome WHEN WAS FIRST SUBSTITUTION RNA EDITING DETECTED?? 2010 Publication of the D. papi mtDNA (Vlcek C, Marande W, Teijeiro S, Lukes J, Burger G) Oct 2011 Matus Valach joins GB's lab as a post-doc to work on Diplonema Jun 2013 Georgette defends successfully her thesis. Nov 2016 Sandrine defends successfully her thesis.