Tryptophan synthase (TS, EC 4.2.1.20) catalyzes the last two steps of L-tryptophan biosynthesis. In pro-karyotes, tryptophan synthase is a multi-enzyme complex, and it consists ofαandβsubunit which forms anα-ββ-αcomplex. In fungi and diatoms, TS is a bifunctional enzyme. Because of the limited genomic and transcriptomic data of algae, there are few studies on TS evolution of algae. Here we analyzed the data of the 1000 Plants Project (1KP), and focused on red algae and brown algae. We found out that the TS of Phaeophy-ceae were fusion genes, which probably originated from the secondary host nucleus, and that the TS of Rho-dophyta contained two genes, TSA and TSB, which both display a possible cyanobacterial origin at the time of primary endosymbiosis. In addition, there were two types of TSB genes (TSB1 and TSB2). Through the multiple sequence alignment of TSB proteins, we found several residues conserved in TSB1 but variable in TSB2 which connect withαsubunit. The phenomenon may suggest that the TSB2 sequences of Rhodophyta cannot form stable complex with TSA.