Tetrahymena thermophila: A divergent perspective on membrane traffic

Skeleton Tetrahymena Thermophila Membrane Supplemental Material

Highly Divergent Mitochondrial ATP Synthase Complexes in Tetrahymena thermophila

The F-type ATP synthase complex is a rotary nano-motor driven by proton motive force to synthesize ATP. Its F(1) sector catalyzes ATP synthesis, whereas the F(o) sector conducts the protons and provides a stator for the rotary action of the complex. Components of both F(1) and F(o) sectors are highly conserved across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Therefore, it was a surprise that genes encoding t...

Tetrahymena thermophila

What does it look like? Tetrahymena thermophila is a unicellular eukaryote which is larger than many mammalian cells (~30 × 50 μm). It swims in temperate freshwater environments, waving its coat of cilia (Figure 1, inset) and phagocytosing food propelled into its gullet. Hunger induces Tetrahymena cells to undergo a transformation, including growth of a long posterior cilium and more coordinate...

Comprehensive Analysis Reveals Dynamic and Evolutionary Plasticity of Rab GTPases and Membrane Traffic in Tetrahymena thermophila

Cellular sophistication is not exclusive to multicellular organisms, and unicellular eukaryotes can resemble differentiated animal cells in their complex network of membrane-bound structures. These comparisons can be illuminated by genome-wide surveys of key gene families. We report a systematic analysis of Rabs in a complex unicellular Ciliate, including gene prediction and phylogenetic cluste...

Adolescence in Tetrahymena thermophila.

The development of sexual maturity in Tetrahymena thermophila has been shown to include an intermediate stage, adolescence, during which cells are capable of mating with mature cells but not other adolescent cells. When the progeny of successfully mated cells are grown logarithmically and tested frequently for the ability to mate, they are unable to form mating pairs for about 65 generations. T...