Microsporidiology is a field of science with a rather long history beginning in the middle of the 19th century when a microsporidian infection of the silkworm devastated the European silkworm industry. Several other microsporidia, mainly in insects and fish, were later described, but these organisms seemed to be mere curiosities for several years. However, when it became clear that microsporidi...

Microsporidia are ubiquitous parasites thought to be closely related to fungi. Their presence in the environment means that humans are frequently exposed to infection. Stool samples were collected from 151 indigenous villagers from the eastern state of Pahang in 2005. The samples were concentrated with water-ether sedimentation, stained with modified trichrome stain and examined under oil-immer...

Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites, recognized as causing chronic diarrhea and systemic disease in AIDS patients, organ transplant recipients, travelers, and malnourished children. Species of microsporidia that infect humans have been detected in drinking-water sources, and methods are needed to ascertain if these microsporidia are viable and capable of causing infections. In th...

Microsporidia in mosquitoes can be divided into two categories based on their life cycles and host-parasite relationships. Some species of microsporidia exhibit simple life cycles with one spore type responsible for oral (horizontal) transmission. They affect only one generation of the mosquito and are not usually host or tissue specific. Brachiola algerae and Vavraia culicis are examples of sp...

Microsporidia are obligate intracellular eukaryotic parasites that utilize a unique mechanism to infect host cells. One of the main characteristics of all microsporidia is that they produce spores containing an extrusion apparatus that consists of a coiled polar tube ending in an anchoring disc at the apical part of the spore. With appropriate conditions inside a suitable host, the polar tube i...

background: species of microsporidia have been known as opportunistic obli-gate intracellular parasites particularly in immunocompromised patients. enterocyto-zoon bieneusi is one of most prevalent intestinal microsporida parasites in hiv + /aids patients. in this study, intestinal microsporidia infection was deter-mined in hiv + /aids patients using microscopic and molecular methods. methods: ...

The deep sea is Earth's largest habitat but little is known about the nature of deep-sea parasitism. In contrast to a few characterized cases of bacterial and protistan parasites, the existence and biological significance of deep-sea parasitic fungi is yet to be understood. Here we report the discovery of a fungus-related parasitic microsporidium, Nematocenator marisprofundi n. gen. n. sp. that...

Zygomycetes and their alleged sister taxon, the microsporidia, exclusively share the presence of a cluster of three genes encoding a sugar transporter, a high mobility group (HMG)-type transcription factor, and an RNA helicase. In zygomycetes, the HMG-type transcription factor acts as the sole sex determinant. This intimately ties the evolutionary history of this gene cluster to the evolution o...

In the last two decades, the scientific community has recognized the Microsporidia importance and associated it with serious infections in immunocompromised patients.1 Since its discovery in 1857, there was controversies in its phylogenetic classification, being recently classified as fungi.1,2 There have been described 150 genera and over 1300 species. Eight genera are described in human hosts...

Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites of medical and commercial importance, characterized by a severe reduction, or even absence, of cellular components typical of eukaryotes such as mitochondria, Golgi apparatus and flagella. This simplistic cellular organization has made it difficult to infer the evolutionary relationship of Microsporidia to other eukaryotes, because they lack ma...