Entamoeba

Entamoeba

Entamoeba histolytica is a pathogenic amoeba second only to the malaria parasite Plasmodium in importance as a protistan killer of people. It kills an estimated 100,000 people each year (W.H.O. bulletin 75, 1997). Entamoeba gingivalis infects the mouths of humans, another relative Entamoeba dispar colonises the gut of many more people than E. histolytica without apparent effect.

Entamoeba links:-

The periodontal amoeba site (E. gingivalis)	THE MICROBIOLOGY OF PERIODONTAL INFECTIONS (E. gingivalis by Trevor Lyons)
C. Graham Clarke's Entamoeba pages	TIGR Genome project E.histolytica blast search

Phylogenetic relations and evolution of Entamoeba.
The position of Entamoeba relative to other organisms has been controversial as has the reconstruction of its evolution (Clark, 2001). Entamoeba is somewhat related to the Vahlkampfiid amoeba (Naegleria, Heteramoeba, etc) according to SSUrDNA analysis (Sogin et al 1996). This is compatible with the fact that like this group they have circular ribosomal RNA plasmids (Bhattacharya et al, 1998) and a similar limax locomotory morphology and cyst structure. However, Entamoeba does not produce a flagellate stage and many phylogenetic analysis place the genus distance to the Vahlkampfiid group.

It has been widely assumed that Entamoeba is a primitive, early branching eukaryote that never acquired mitochondria (Bakker-Grunwald & Worstmann, 1991), however it appears now that Entamoeba does in fact possess mitochondria-like organelles. These mitochondria-organelles are called "crypton" (Mai et al, 1999, Gosh et al, 2000) and "mitosome" (Tovar et al, 1999), they are double membraned and contain DNA (Gosh et al, 2000) . Recent studies conclude that Endamoeba and Entamoeba are related to Pelomyxa and should be grouped in the Archamoeba (Milyutina et al, 2001). A more recent study places Entamoeba together with Dictyostelium and Mastigamoeba in sub phylum Conosa (Bapteste, 2002).

Cytoskeletal Proteins from Entamoeba.

A number of actin binding proteins have been isolated from Entamoeba and these presumably perform a function similar to homologs in other cell types.

Protein	Function	Reference	GenBank
Actin
Actobindin
EF-1a
EhABPH		Ebert et al, 2000	AF118397
Myosin 1b		Voigt et al, 1999
Profilin		Binder et al, 1995

References:-

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