Mitochondria of Protozoa

Primitive anaerobic protozoa: the wrong host for mitochondria and hydrogenosomes?

Kingdom protozoa and its 18 phyla.

The demarcation of protist kingdoms is reviewed, a complete revised classification down to the level of subclass is provided for the kingdoms Protozoa, Archezoa, and Chromista, and the phylogenetic basis of the revised classification is outlined. Removal of Archezoa because of their ancestral absence of mitochondria, peroxisomes, and Golgi dictyosomes makes the kingdom Protozoa much more homoge...

Calcium regulation in protozoan parasites.

The calcium ion (Ca(2+)) is used as a major signaling molecule in a diverse range of eukaryotic cells including several human parasitic protozoa, such as Trypanosoma cruzi, Trypanosoma brucei, Leishmania spp, Plasmodium spp, Toxoplasma gondii, Cryptosporidium parvum, Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia and Trichomonas vaginalis. Ca(2+) is critical for invasion of intracellular parasites, and...

Designer algorithms for cryptogene searches

RNA editing in the mitochondria of kinetoplastid protozoa describes the insertion and (or) deletion of precise numbers of uridines at precise locations in the transcribed RNA. Such genes are known as cryptogenes. We describe dynamic programming algorithms to search for unknown cryptogenes and for the sequences that template the editing, gRNAs. Results of applying the cryptogenegRNA algorithm to...

Sense from nonsense: RNA editing in mitochondria of kinetoplastid protozoa and slime molds

The reworking of the sequences of mitochondrial DNA transcripts is an intriguing genetic phenomenon that continues to create amazement even today, 9 years after the discovery of uridine (U) insertion/deletion editing in trypanosomatid mitochondria. Upon initial exposure to this phenomenon, the usual scientific questions of what and how were rapidly followed by the more philosophical question of...