Journal
PARASITOLOGY INTERNATIONAL
Volume 64, Issue 3, Pages 254-259Publisher
ELSEVIER IRELAND LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.parint.2014.10.005
Keywords
Apicoplast; Phylogeny; Evolution; Plasmodium
Categories
Funding
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [23247038] Funding Source: KAKEN
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The phylum Apicomplexa includes many parasitic genera of medical and veterinary importance including Plasmodium (causative agent of malaria), Toxoplasma (toxoplasmosis), and Babesia (babesiosis). Most of the apicomplexan parasites possess a unique, essential organelle, the apicoplast, which is a plastid without photosynthetic ability. Although the apicoplast is considered to have evolved through secondary endosymbiosis of a red alga into the common ancestral cell of apicomplexans, its evolutionary history has been under debate until recently. The apicoplast has a genome around 30-40 kb in length. Repertoire and arrangement of the apicoplast genome-encoded genes differ among apicomplexan genera, although within the genus Plasmodium these are almost conserved. Genes in the apicoplast genome may be useful markers for Plasmodium phylogeny, because these are single copy (except for the inverted repeat region) and may have more phylogenetic signal than the mitochondria( genome that have been most commonly used for Plasmodium phylogeny. This review describes recent studies concerning the evolutionary origin of the apicoplast, presents evolutionary comparison of the primary structures of apicoplast genomes from apicomplexan parasites, and summarizes recent findings of malaria phylogeny based on apicoplast genome-encoded genes. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available