Genome-scale metabolic networks were generated using AuCoMe (Belcour et al., 2023).

Considering the heterogeneity of the Phaeoexplorer dataset, tree distinct comparative analyses were carried out:

• A first one, very exploratory, using the whole genome dataset, in order to obtain a broad overview of all possible metabolic reactions in relation to what is present in the Metacyc database
• A second more restricted analysis focussed on the 16 best quality genomes, being a compromise between assembly quality and phylogenetic diversity
• A third analysis was designed specifically to look at metabolic features in the highest quality freshwater species genomes, compared to other Ectocarpales genomes of similar quality