36 Results Found

Symbiotic associations between bacteria and ciliate protists are rather common. In particular, several cases were reported involving bacteria of the alphaproteobacterial lineage Rickettsiales, but the diversity, features, and interactions in these as...

Determination and comparisons of complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are important to understand the origin and evolution of mitochondria. Mitogenomes of unicellular protists are particularly informative in this regard because they are gene-...

Although constituting more than 100,000 described species, protists are virtually ignored within the arena of biodiversity conservation. One reason is the widespread belief that the majority of protists have cosmopolitan distributions, in contrast to...

Identification and characterization of protein complexes and interactomes has been essential to the understanding of fundamental nuclear processes including transcription, replication, recombination, and maintenance of genome stability. Despite signi...

Paramecium (Ciliophora) is an ideal model organism to study the biogeography of protists. However, many regions of the world, such as Central America, are still neglected in understanding Paramecium diversity. We combined morphological and molecular...

The aim of this study was to analyse the cytotoxicity of heavy metals (HMs) and nanoparticles (NPs) on populations of the ciliated protist Euplotes aediculatus. We used ecotoxicological tests, antioxidant assays, and the MixTOX tool in Microsoft®...

Protists are a dominant group in marine microplankton communities and play important roles in energy flux and nutrient cycling in marine ecosystems. Environmental sequences produced by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are increasingly used fo...

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are prevalent in the genomes of all organisms. They are widely used as genetic markers, and are insertion/deletion mutation hotspots, which directly influence genome evolution. However, little is known about such import...

Metabarcoding and high-throughput sequencing methods have greatly improved our understanding of protist diversity. Although the V4 region of small subunit ribosomal DNA (SSU-V4 rDNA) is the most widely used marker in DNA metabarcoding of eukaryotic m...

Ciliates are a diverse protistan group and many consist of cryptic species complexes whose members may be restricted to particular biogeographic locations. Mitochondrial genes, characterized by a high resolution for closely related species, were appl...

The genus Pseudoblepharisma is currently comprised of only one species, P. tenue, and one variant, P. tenue var. viride, both described as free-living ciliates thriving in oxygen depleted freshwater habitats of Europe. Here we report on this genus be...

Paramecium (Ciliophora) systematics is well studied, and about twenty morphological species have been described. The morphological species may include several genetic species. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses revealed that the species diversi...

Glutathione peroxidases (GPxs) form a broad family of antioxidant proteins essential for maintaining redox homeostasis in eukaryotic cells. In this study, we used an integrative approach that combines bioinformatics, molecular biology, and biochemist...

Climacostol (5-[(2Z)-non-2-en-1-yl]benzene-1,3-diol) is a resorcinol produced by the protozoan Climacostomum virens for defence against predators. It exerts a potent antimicrobial activity against bacterial and fungal pathogens, inhibits the growth o...

Kuroshio Current intrusion (KCI) has significant impacts on the oceanographic conditions and ecological processes of the Pacific-Asian marginal seas. Little is known to which extent and how, specifically, the microzooplankton community can be influen...

Microbes in marine sediments constitute up to five-sixths of the planet’s total biomass, but their diversity is little explored, especially for those forming associations with unicellular protists. Heterotrophic ciliates are among the most domi...

Extreme habitats often harbor specific communities that differ substantially from non-extreme habitats. In many cases, these communities are characterized by archaea, bacteria and protists, whereas the number of species of metazoa and higher plants i...

Kuibyshev Reservoir, the largest in the Volga basin, is poorly covered by modern molecular studies. The results of a metabarcoding study of pro- and eukaryotic microbial plankton in its lower section during the summer period are presented. Bacteriopl...

Bacterivory is an important ecological function of protists in natural ecosystems. However, there are diverse bacterial species resistant to protistan digestion, which reduces the carbon flow to higher trophic levels. So far, a molecular biological v...

Ciliates are a group of phagotrophic protists found in a wide variety of ecosystems. This study builds on recent studies of ciliates in the Krka river and investigates changes in the phylogenetic and functional diversity of ciliates in biofilm to pre...

Lake Kislo-Sladkoe is a stratified water body partly isolated from the White Sea. Perennial meromixis in the lake irregularly alternates with mixing events. Taking into account that the protists of Arctic coastal stratified water bodies are understud...

Telomerase is an enzyme involved in the maintenance of telomeres. Telomere shortening due to the end-replication problem is a threat to the genome integrity of all eukaryotes. Telomerase inside cells depends on a myriad of protein–protein and R...

As the insects for food and feed industry grows, a new understanding of the industrially reared insect microbiome is needed to better comprehend the role that it plays in both maintaining insect health and generating disease. While many microbiome pr...

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a hereditary genetic disorder caused by the lack of motile cilia or the assembxly of dysfunctional ones. This rare human disease affects 1 out of 10,000–20,000 individuals and is caused by mutations in at lea...

We have conducted a 10-year-long coprological study of the animals housed in two zoological institutions (ZooAquarium and Faunia, Madrid, Spain) to assess the parasite biodiversity, prevalence, and their relation with host class, diet, and enclosure...

Katanin-like 2 protein (Katnal2) orthologs have a tripartite domain organization. Two highly conserved regions, an N-terminal LisH (Lis-homology) domain and a C-terminal AAA catalytic domain, are separated by a less conserved linker. The AAA domain o...

This study represents the first investigation of soil ciliate diversity and community structure in the Marche region, Italy, encompassing both natural sites and agro-ecosystems. The main aims were (i) to assess the ability of ciliates to discriminate...

During a survey in 2015, an impressive assemblage of organisms was found in a hypersaline pond of the Messolonghi saltworks. The salinity ranged between 50 and 180 ppt, and the organisms that were found fell into the categories of Cyanobacteria (17 s...

Here we present a comprehensive review of the diversity revealed by research in limnology and microbial ecology conducted in Byers Peninsula (Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica) during the last two decades. The site constitutes one...

Paramecium bursaria, a ciliated protist, forms a symbiotic relationship with the green alga Chlorella variabilis. This endosymbiotic association is a model system for studying the establishment of secondary symbiosis and interactions between the symb...

Balantioides coli is a ciliated protist that can cause dysentery in humans, pigs and nonhuman primates and may have the potential for zoonotic transmission. Its diagnosis is routinely performed through conventional parasitological techniques, and few...

6-methylpurine (6mp) is a toxic analog of adenine that inhibits RNA and protein synthesis and interferes with adenine salvage mediated by adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (APRTase). Mutants of the ciliated protist Tetrahymena thermophila that are re...

The new epidemiological scenario has so far focused on the environmental circulation of human viral pathogens. Owing to the side effects of chemical disinfectants, there is an increasing need for knowledge on the use of virucidal compounds, especiall...

Colpodella species are free-living predatory protists that prey on algae, ciliates and bodonids using myzocytosis. Colpodella species have been reported in human and animal infections. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using primers targeting 18S rRNA...

Aquatic invertebrates are common reservoirs of a rapidly expanding group of circular Rep-encoding ssDNA (CRESS-DNA) viruses. This study identified and explored the phylogenetic relationship between novel CRESS-DNA viral genotypes associated with Paci...

Microzooplankton communities are fundamental components of marine food webs and have the potential to impact the functioning of carbon pumps. The identification of common responses of microzooplankton to global change has been challenging due to thei...