Category: Our papers

CONCLUSIONS: In-depth analysis of Naegleria genomes and transcriptomes provides a model of cellular systems involved in opportunistic pathogenicity, uncovering new angles to understanding the biology of a rare but highly fatal pathogen.

Comparative analyses of saprotrophy in Salisapilia sapeloensis and diverse plant pathogenic oomycetes reveal lifestyle-specific gene expression.
FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 2020 Sep 12;:
Authors: de Vries S, de Vries J, A…

Oomycetes include many devastating plant pathogens. Across oomycete diversity, plant-infecting lineages are interspersed by non-pathogenic ones. Unfortunately, our understanding of the evolution of lifestyle switches is hampered by a scarcity of data on the molecular biology of saprotrophic oomycetes, ecologically important primary colonizers of dead tissue that can serve as informative reference points for understanding the evolution of pathogens. Here, we established Salisapilia sapeloensis as…

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Publisher Correction: Genetic tool development in marine protists: emerging model organisms for experimental cell biology.
Nat Methods. 2020 Apr 15;:
Authors: Faktorová D, Nisbet RER, Fernández Rob…

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

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Genetic tool development in marine protists: emerging model organisms for experimental cell biology.
Nat Methods. 2020 Apr 06;:
Authors: Faktorová D, Nisbet RER, Fernández Robledo JA, Casacuberta E…

Diverse microbial ecosystems underpin life in the sea. Among these microbes are many unicellular eukaryotes that span the diversity of the eukaryotic tree of life. However, genetic tractability has been limited to a few species, which do not represent eukaryotic diversity or environmentally relevant taxa. Here, we report on the development of genetic tools in a range of protists primarily from marine environments. We present evidence for foreign DNA delivery and expression in 13 species never…

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Genome-wide Transcriptional Analysis of Tetrahymena thermophila Response to Exogenous Cholesterol.
J Eukaryot Microbiol. 2019 Nov 09;:
Authors: Najle SR, Hernández J, Ocaña-Pallarès E, García Sibur…

The ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila does not require sterols for growth and synthesizes pentacyclic triterpenoid alcohols, mainly tetrahymanol, as sterol surrogates. However, when sterols are present in the environment, T. thermophila efficiently incorporates and modifies them. These modifications consist of desaturation reactions at positions C5(6), C7(8), and C22(23), and de-ethylation at C24 of 29-carbon sterols (i.e. phytosterols). Three out of four of the enzymes involved in the sterol…

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Nephromyces represents a diverse and novel lineage of the Apicomplexa that has retained apicoplasts.
Genome Biol Evol. 2019 Jul 22;:
Authors: Muñoz-Gómez SA, Durnin K, Eme L, Paight C, Lane CE, Saf…