Anatomy of a Fever 英文参考文献.docVIP

Synopses of Research Articles Ciliate Genome Sequence Reveals Unique Features of a Model Eukaryote Richard Robinson | DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040304 One reason to sequence the genomes of non-human organisms is to better understand our similarities and differences. And, at ?rst sight, it is hard to imagine a eukaryote more different from humans than Tetrahymena thermophila. A relative of Paramecium, this single-celled creature has a strong but ?exible exterior covered with rows of cilia; but it is inside where things seem to get really alien. Each cell contains not one but two nuclei: a micronucleus, which contains only ?ve chromosomes, and a macronucleus, which has more than 200. from what were once free-living cyanobacteria; typically, many of the genes of such an endosymbiont are shifted into the host nucleus, as they have been in the apicomplexans and dino?agellates. T. thermophila has no plastids, but it has been suggested that its ancestors did. The authors discovered no remnants of plastid genes within T. thermophila, strongly suggesting that plastid acquisition occurred after the other two groups split off from the ciliates. All told, the genome contains over 27,000 protein-coding genes, more than naively expected for a single- celled species and comparable to the number in humans. Certain gene families appear to have expanded signi?cantly in T. thermophila, indicating the likely importance of the processes carried out by the proteins each family encodes. An example is the presence of over 300 genes for voltage- gated ion channels, which control membrane transport, a key function of this free-living, single-celled creature. Previous analysis of gene structure showed that T. thermophila uses only one stop codon (UGA) during protein synthesis, compared to the three that are standard in most eukaryotes; the unused ones instead encode glutamine. As in many other organisms, UGA itself is also used in some genes to encode the amino acid selenocysteine, maki