Evolution of a morphological novelty occurred before genome compaction in a lineage of extreme parasites
10.1073/pnas.1410442111
Crossref journal-article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (341)
Abstract

Significance Intracellular obligate parasitism results in extreme adaptations, whose evolutionary history is difficult to understand, because intermediate forms are hardly ever found. Microsporidia are highly derived intracellular parasites that are related to fungi. We describe the evolutionary history of a new microsporidian parasite found in the hindgut epithelium of the crustacean Daphnia and conclude that the new species has retained ancestral features that were lost in other microsporidia, whose hallmarks are the evolution of a unique infection apparatus, extreme genome reduction, and loss of mitochondrial respiration. The first evolutionary steps leading to the extreme metabolic and genomic simplification of microsporidia involved the adoption of a parasitic lifestyle, the development of a specialized infection apparatus, and the loss of diverse regulatory proteins.

Bibliography

Haag, K. L., James, T. Y., Pombert, J.-F., Larsson, R., Schaer, T. M. M., Refardt, D., & Ebert, D. (2014). Evolution of a morphological novelty occurred before genome compaction in a lineage of extreme parasites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(43), 15480–15485.

Authors 7
  1. Karen L. Haag (first)
  2. Timothy Y. James (additional)
  3. Jean-François Pombert (additional)
  4. Ronny Larsson (additional)
  5. Tobias M. M. Schaer (additional)
  6. Dominik Refardt (additional)
  7. Dieter Ebert (additional)
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Dates
Type When
Created 10 years, 10 months ago (Oct. 14, 2014, midnight)
Deposited 3 years, 2 months ago (June 7, 2022, 7:50 a.m.)
Indexed 4 weeks ago (Aug. 6, 2025, 8:01 a.m.)
Issued 10 years, 10 months ago (Oct. 13, 2014)
Published 10 years, 10 months ago (Oct. 13, 2014)
Published Online 10 years, 10 months ago (Oct. 13, 2014)
Published Print 10 years, 10 months ago (Oct. 28, 2014)
Funders 0

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@article{Haag_2014, title={Evolution of a morphological novelty occurred before genome compaction in a lineage of extreme parasites}, volume={111}, ISSN={1091-6490}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1410442111}, DOI={10.1073/pnas.1410442111}, number={43}, journal={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, publisher={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, author={Haag, Karen L. and James, Timothy Y. and Pombert, Jean-François and Larsson, Ronny and Schaer, Tobias M. M. and Refardt, Dominik and Ebert, Dieter}, year={2014}, month=oct, pages={15480–15485} }