422 Results Found

Protists represent a major component of eukaryotic diversity within the soil microbiome, playing critical roles in mediating carbon and nitrogen cycling and influencing nutrient availability and soil health. Their diversity is shaped by multiple fact...

Cryptosporidium spp., Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia duodenalis, and Blastocystis sp. infections have been frequently reported as etiological agents for gastroenteritis, but also as common gut inhabitants in apparently healthy individuals. Between Ju...

Thraustochytrids are aquatic unicellular protists organisms that represent an important reservoir of a wide range of bioactive compounds, such as essential polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) such as arachidonic acid (ARA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)...

Lake Kislo-Sladkoe is a stratified water body partly isolated from the White Sea. Perennial meromixis in the lake irregularly alternates with mixing events. Taking into account that the protists of Arctic coastal stratified water bodies are understud...

Anthropogenic stresses are intensively affecting the structure and function of microbial communities in coastal ecosystems. Despite being essential components of coastal ecosystems, the environmental influences and assembly processes of protist commu...

Saline and hypersaline waters are one of the most peculiar ecosystems of our planet, characterized by extreme life conditions. Despite their worldwide distribution, the diversity and abundance of protist communities in these ecosystems remain poorly...

As transitional ecosystems between land and sea, estuaries are characterized by a unique environment that supports complex and diverse microbial communities. A comprehensive analysis of microbial diversity and ecological processes at different trophi...

Hot springs are some of the most special environments on Earth. Many prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes have been found to live in this environment. The Himalayan geothermal belt (HGB) has numerous hot springs spread across the area. Comprehensive r...

The use of plastic agricultural mulching films presents a “double-edged sword”: while these films enhance crop yields, they also lead to the accumulation of plastic film residues in the soil, creating new pollutants (microplastics). Our u...

In aquatic benthic environments, benthic organisms have been found to regulate important biogeochemical characteristics and perform key ecosystem functions. To further explore the ecological impact of the snail Bellamya purificata’s, presence o...

Microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, and protists, are key drivers in aquatic ecosystems, maintaining ecological balance and normal material circulation, playing vital roles in ecosystem functions and biogeochemical processes. To evaluate the e...

Karst caves, formed by the erosion of soluble carbonate rocks, provide unique ecosystems characterized by stable temperatures and high humidity. These conditions support diverse microbial communities, including wall microbial fouling, aquatic biofilm...

Protists represent a vast yet underexplored reservoir of enzymatic diversity across the eukaryotic tree of life. In this study, we established axenic strains of diverse protists from four major eukaryotic supergroups using single-cell isolation and g...

Thraustochytrium aureum ssp. strugatskii, a marine protist belonging to the class Labyrinthulea, exhibits a complex life cycle characterized by alternating motile and vegetative phases. Using an integrative multimodal microscopy approach, we reconstr...

Agricultural plastic mulch enhances crop yields but leads to persistent microplastic contamination in soils. Concurrently, nitrogen (N) fertilization and atmospheric deposition profoundly reshape microbial ecosystems. This study examined the individu...

Dientamoeba fragilis is a cosmopolitan intestinal protist colonizing the human gut with varying prevalence depending on the cohort studied and the diagnostic methods used. Its role in human health remains unclear mainly due to the very sporadic numbe...

With the birth of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, genomic data in public databases have increased exponentially. Unfortunately, exogenous contamination or intracellular parasite sequences in assemblies could confuse genomic analysis. Mea...

As a contribution to understanding the ecological framework of protistan seasonal succession patterns, we present the weekly-to-monthly (January–October) light microscopy-based study of nano- and microplanktonic protist communities of Adventfjorden w...

Although constituting more than 100,000 described species, protists are virtually ignored within the arena of biodiversity conservation. One reason is the widespread belief that the majority of protists have cosmopolitan distributions, in contrast to...

After invading the host organism, a battle occurs between the parasitic protists and the host’s immune system, the result of which determines not only whether and how well the host survives and recovers, but also the fate of the parasite itself...

To reveal the effects of Asian dust and phosphorus (P) input on the structure and function of micro-food web in the Yellow Sea, an experiment was conducted onboard the southern Yellow Sea where P was deficient. The response of the abundance and troph...

Resolving the eukaryotic tree of life (eToL) remains a fundamental challenge in biology. Much of eukaryotic phylogenetic diversity is occupied by unicellular microbial eukaryotes (i.e., protists). Among these, the phylogenetic positions of a signific...

Bacteria, fungi, and protists occupy a pivotal position in maintaining soil ecology. Despite limited knowledge on their responses to managed vegetation restoration strategies in karst regions, we aimed to study the essential microbial communities inv...

As the insects for food and feed industry grows, a new understanding of the industrially reared insect microbiome is needed to better comprehend the role that it plays in both maintaining insect health and generating disease. While many microbiome pr...

Land use disrupts the ecosystem functioning of freshwater systems and significantly affects trophic state. Consequently, biodiversity is severely affected by changes to the ecosystem. Microbial eukaryotes (i.e., protists) play an essential role in ec...

Protists are the most diverse eukaryotes on our planet and metabarcoding has revealed an enormous diversity even from deep-sea environments. A range of different species has also been isolated from the deep sea and some have proven able to survive an...

Protists are a dominant group in marine microplankton communities and play important roles in energy flux and nutrient cycling in marine ecosystems. Environmental sequences produced by high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods are increasingly used fo...

Obligate symbionts often exhibit some degree of co-speciation with their hosts. One prominent example is the symbiosis between termites and their wood-feeding hindgut protists. This symbiosis is mutually obligate, vertically inherited by anal feeding...

Coral reef microbial communities play pivotal roles in ecosystem functioning but remain understudied, particularly across spatial gradients and domains. Here, we use environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding of 16S and 18S rRNA genes to profile bacteria...

Heterotrophic protists are key components of marine ecosystems. They act as controllers of bacterial and microphytobenthos production and contribute significantly to the carbon flux to higher trophic levels. Still, metabarcoding studies on benthic pr...

Protists are key components of the microbial food web in marine pelagic systems because they link algal and bacterial production to higher trophic levels. However, their functioning and bathymetric distribution in benthic deep-sea ecosystems are stil...

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are prevalent in the genomes of all organisms. They are widely used as genetic markers, and are insertion/deletion mutation hotspots, which directly influence genome evolution. However, little is known about such import...

In this research, the connection between age and microbial diversity in cattle was explored, revealing significant changes in both protist diversity and fungal microbiota composition with age. Using fecal samples from 21 Simmental cattle, microbial c...

In the publication “Detection of Ribosomal DNA Sequence Polymorphisms in the Protist Plasmodiophora brassicae for the Identification of Geographical Isolates”, Laila et al.[...]

Soil microorganisms are important components of forest ecosystems and play a key role in biogeochemical cycling. Bamboo is invasive due to its strong clonal expansion ability, which often leads to changes in plant communities and soil environments, t...

Wild chimpanzee populations in West Africa (Pan troglodytes verus) have dramatically decreased as a direct consequence of anthropogenic activities and infectious diseases. Little information is currently available on the epidemiology, pathogenic sign...

Enteropathogenic parasites and viruses have been frequently reported in swine and can infect a wide range of mammals, including humans. Among the wide variety of parasites infecting swine, diarrhoeagenic protists are among those that cause significan...

Kinetoplastea are free living and parasitic protists with unique features among Eukaryota. Pathogenic Kinetoplastea parasites (i.e., Trypanosoma and Leishmania spp.) undergo several developmental transitions essential for survival in their hosts. The...

Protist grazing pressure plays a major role in controlling aquatic bacterial populations, affecting energy flow through the microbial loop and biogeochemical cycles. Predator-escape mechanisms might play a crucial role in energy flow through the micr...

Little information is currently available on the epidemiology of parasitic and commensal protist species in captive non-human primates (NHP) and their zoonotic potential. This study investigates the occurrence, molecular diversity, and potential tran...

Protists inhabit marine, brackish and fresh waters. The salt barrier plays an important role in the origin of their diversity. Salinity tolerance differs among species and sometimes even among different strains of the same species, indicating local a...

We review the application of molecular methods to estimate biodiversity in the marine environment. All of the methods reviewed here, which are at the forefront of molecular research, can be applied to all organisms in all habitats, but the case studi...

Understanding the maintenance of soil protists within forest ecosystems is crucial for comprehending ecosystem responses to climate change. A comprehensive analysis of soil samples from the Fengtongzhai National Reserve in China, utilizing high-throu...

Clubroot is a soil-borne disease caused by the protist Plasmodiophora brassicae (P. brassicae). It is one of the most economically important diseases of Brassica rapa and other cruciferous crops as it can cause remarkable yield reductions. Understand...

Kuibyshev Reservoir, the largest in the Volga basin, is poorly covered by modern molecular studies. The results of a metabarcoding study of pro- and eukaryotic microbial plankton in its lower section during the summer period are presented. Bacteriopl...

Salinity is a key environmental factor regulating lipid metabolism in marine oleaginous protists. This study examined the impact of NaCl concentration on growth, glucose utilization, and lipid biosynthesis in Thraustochytrium sp. ATCC 26185. Moderate...

Parasitic infections in non-human primates (NHPs) kept ex situ can be caused by zoonotic protists like Balantioides coli and Entamoeba histolytica. In Brazil, little is known about these infections in neotropical species. This study aimed to identify...

Determination and comparisons of complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are important to understand the origin and evolution of mitochondria. Mitogenomes of unicellular protists are particularly informative in this regard because they are gene-...

Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) occur in fresh water globally. These can degrade water quality and produce toxins, resulting in ecological and economic damages. Thus, short-term management methods (i.e., algaecides) are necessary to r...

Climacostol (5-[(2Z)-non-2-en-1-yl]benzene-1,3-diol) is a resorcinol produced by the protozoan Climacostomum virens for defence against predators. It exerts a potent antimicrobial activity against bacterial and fungal pathogens, inhibits the growth o...