First finding of free-living representatives of Prokinetoplastina and their nuclear and mitochondrial genomes.

ABSTRACT: Kinetoplastids are heterotrophic flagellated protists, including important parasites of humans and animals (trypanosomatids), and ecologically important free-living bacterial consumers (bodonids). Phylogenies have shown that the earliest-branching kinetoplastids are all parasites or obligate endosymbionts, whose highly-derived state makes reconstructing the ancestral state of the group challenging. We have isolated new strains of unusual free-living flagellates that molecular phylogeny shows to be most closely related to endosymbiotic and parasitic Perkinsela and Ichthyobodo species that, together with unidentified environmental sequences, form the clade at the base of kinetoplastids. These strains are therefore the first described free-living prokinetoplastids, and potentially very inform

SUBMITTER: Tikhonenkov DV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7859406 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature