Journal article
Endosymbiosis undone by stepwise elimination of the plastid in a parasitic dinoflagellate
SG Gornik, undefined Febrimarsa, AM Cassin, JI MacRae, A Ramaprasad, Z Rchiad, MJ McConville, A Bacic, GI McFadden, A Pain, RF Waller
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | Published : 2015
Abstract
Organelle gain through endosymbiosis has been integral to the origin and diversification of eukaryotes, and, once gained, plastids and mitochondria seem seldom lost. Indeed, discovery of nonphotosynthetic plastids in many eukaryotes - notably, the apicoplast in apicomplexan parasites such as the malaria pathogen Plasmodium - highlights the essential metabolic functions performed by plastids beyond photosynthesis. Once a cell becomes reliant on these ancillary functions, organelle dependence is apparently difficult to overcome. Previous examples of endosymbiotic organelle loss (either mitochondria or plastids), which have been invoked to explain the origin of eukaryotic diversity, have subseq..
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Awarded by Science Foundation Ireland
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Nick Katris for assistance with Toxoplasma transformation and Ellen Nisbet for critically reading this report. This work was supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Grants DP130100572 and DP1093395; a King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Faculty Baseline Research Fund; and Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative Grant VR0254. S.G.G. was supported by Science Foundation Ireland Grant 13/SIRG/2125; F. was supported by an Australia Award; A.M.C. and A.B. were supported by ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls Grant CE110001007; and M.J.M. was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council as a Principal Research Fellow.