New #ISEPpapers! An expanded phylogenomic analysis of #Heterolobosea reveals the deep relationships, non-canonical genetic codes, and cryptic flagellate stages in the group https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1055790325000065
"The first broadly-sampled phylogenomic analyses of the phylum Heterolobosea... The first two cases of genetic code alterations in Heterolobosea... Evidence for cryptic #flagellates in #Acrasidae and loss of flagella in #Neovahlkampfia."
New #ISEPpapers #preprint! Two newly cultivated eukaryotrophic #flagellates represent distinct #anaerobic lineages within Rhizaria https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.09.01.610664v2
#protists #microbes #rhizaria #evolution #biology #taxonomy #phylogeny #NewSpecies
#Genetic analyses show how #symbiotic #bacteria in #termite #gut has changed over course of #evolution.
#microbiome #endomicrobia #genome #hgt #flagellates
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-genetic-analyses-symbiotic-bacteria-termite.html
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, have analyzed the evolutionary development of symbiotic bacteria in the intestines of termites with regard to their metabolic capabilities.
Positive ID on most prolific micro-critters in the experimental #aquarium in my basement next to the floor drain.
Beast is a freshwater bristle worm that reproduces by “budding”…basically breaking in two. ID photo from ProjectNoah.Org website…
A few other beasts have been spotted, but not captured in 40x spotting scope.
Drug out the 1970s student’s microscope bought new at a hobby store that was going out of business…a Tasco with a very nice stage/focus mechanism and probably better lenses than you can get in amateur scopes today. Had tried to donate it to a toy museum or other place as a hermetically sealed time capsule…but couldn’t find a home…so putting it to at least a bit of use now.
Found many tiny seemingly single cell #flagellates zipping around the slide…along with closeup/positive ID of the bristle worm.
Possibly some freshwater diatoms or very rectilinear algae without color?
Need help with ID’s…if you have the knowledge.
Single-celled #protists in the guts of #animals thrive without the powerhouse of the cell: #Genomic analysis suggests the oxymonad lineage lost their #mitochondria about 100 million years ago https://www.isep-protists.com/post/genomics-of-preaxostyla
New #ISEPpapers! #Genomics of #Preaxostyla #Flagellates Illuminates the Path Towards the Loss of Mitochondria https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1011050
#microbes #evolution #organelles #eukaryotes #bioinformatics #science #biology #discovery
Happy Monday again, #ScienceMastodon! The first Research Highlight from JCS Issue 16 features a paper from Toshiyuki Oda and colleagues at the Universities of Yamanashi and Tokyo, using the unicellular algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to break down roles of tubulin modifications in ciliary/flagellar motility. #CellBiology #microtubules #flagellates
Roles of ciliary tubulin PTMs in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/136/16/e136_e1601/325932/Roles-of-ciliary-tubulin-PTMs-in-Chlamydomonas
The cytoskeletal core of cilia and flagella, called the axoneme, is composed of microtubules (MTs), the dynamics of which can be dramatically influenced by post-translational modifications (PTMs) to tubulin C-terminal tails. In mammals, the presence of many tubulin genes, protein isoforms and potential combinations of PTMs make understanding the roles each might have in ciliary function extremely challenging. The biflagellate unicellular algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, however, possesses only four tubulin genes, which encode two pairs of identical α- and β-tubulins. In this study (Kubo et al., 2023), Toshiyuki Oda and colleagues take advantage of the simplicity of Chlamydomonas tubulin expression to explore the ciliary roles of tubulin PTMs by mutating key residues to block either glutamylation or glycylation on α- or β-tubulin tails, respectively. Loss of glutamylation of α-tubulin causes severe loss of cell motility despite having no clear effect on axoneme structure, suggesting that it influences the physical properties of ciliary MTs. In contrast, blocking glycylation of β-tubulin produces truncated, nonmotile flagella lacking central axonemal MTs, resembling other Chlamydomonas mutants for the MT-severing ATPase katanin. These findings thus illuminate distinct but crucial functions for both PTMs in ciliary motility, which might also contribute to understanding pathogenic mechanisms in human ciliopathies.
ISEP
CellBioNews
AnthropoceneMan
Amelia Glazier