Random picture dump: Parabasalid mitosis

I actually went out and did stuff this weekend. Like, non-protist stuff involving geographical locations outside the lab. Incidentally, this weekend also happened to be about the hottest this summer, and heat and I aren't the best of friends. Reading isn't particularly fun on a headache, so I went over my random protist videos and got more screenshots. Most of them should end up in the upcoming 'microforay' sometime soon, but I also found something cool from an adventure way back in May. Not enough material for a microforay, but still wanted to dump it somewhere.

Had to do some stuff with termite (local Zootermopsis) gut symbionts, so I dumped them under DIC for fun. There was the usual gang: Streblomastix, Trichomitopsis, Trichonympha and miscellaneous smaller things. Watching Trichonymphas (they're big and cute enough to be a count noun) can get quite addicting, and the guilt from being responsible for their inevitable death by oxygen poisoning compels you to acquaint yourself with every individual on the slide. At that point, I noticed something was odd about the way some of them moved. Furthermore, their anterior ends appeared strange...as if there were two "heads"!

(Once again, apologies for the crappy image quality, but this is the best I can do until I actually have the time to sit down and learn the program.)

OMG, cell division! I still find dividing cells utterly awesome, even just conceptually - it's as if unicellular organisms regularly undergo a "Siamese twin" phase! This is especially evident in organisms who continue to move about and beat their flagella during division, thereby making the two-individuals-in-one concept even more apparent. The cell(s?) usually move(s) around in a fairly incoherent manner at that point, although that might depend on the species too.

Anyway, what's that thing in the middle, between the two "heads"?

As you may have guessed, that thing is indeed the nucleus in mitosis, with spindle fibres all over. With chromosomes. Roughly like these figures from Cleveland (1960 J Protozool):

Top: Whole Trichonympha in early anaphase. Bottom: Close-up of mitotic nucleus. The chromosomes are separated as the thick central spindle grows, pushing apart the centrioles which pull chromosomes along with them via the astral rays. (Cleveland 1960 J Protozool)

Parabasalian mitosis can be quite weird and awesome, but that's a topic for another day. At the moment, I can't even crop properly anymore...ignore that random line in 9a. Just thought I'd share pictures of weird organisms doing cool things.

Oh, and if I ever catch these critters mating, you'll hear it. Potentially even literally ^^

Sunday Protist -- Rostronympha and latest parabasalian taxonomy

Since I just spent hours staring at onychophorans (instead of studying), gonna skimp out on the Sunday Protist this week. So here's a wonderful alien-looking freak with a proboscis, Rostronympha; I totally demand an SEM of this, by the way:

Parabasalid Rostronympha. Image by Guy Brugerolle via Micro*scope.

I can't find the original description at the moment, but vaguely recall having searched for it ambitiously once and failed miserably. It's supposed to be (Duboscq, Grassé & Rose, 1937), with a later mention in PP Grasse, A Hollande (1963) Ann. Sci. Natur. Zool. Ser "Les flagelles des genres Holomastigotoides et. Rostronympha". Might as well order it sometime...

And now onto a really nice taxonomic summary of parabsalians by Cepicka, Hampl and Kulda 2009 in Protist:

Recently revised parabasalian taxonomy.

There are now six classes: Trichomonadea, Hypotrichomonadea, Cristamonadea, Tritrichomonadea, Spirotrichonymphea and Trichonymphea. This will be on the final AND your next weekly spelling test. More importantly, this is how they relate:

Phylogenetic relationships between the six new classes.

Ok, I must run...will definitely get back to parabasalians in much more detail later. Some people in our department happen to be rather obsessed with them, and obsession can be contagious. But for now, feel free to join me in salivating over that really sweet diagram!

Right, finals...

Source:
Cepicka, I., Hampl, V., & Kulda, J. (2010). Critical Taxonomic Revision of Parabasalids with Description of one new Genus and three new Species Protist DOI: 10.1016/j.protis.2009.11.005

Sunday Protist - Kofoidia: Crowned by luriculae

This one will be short, as I still haven't had the chance to sit down and go on an epic research blogging adventure. Let's glance at Kofoidia, an obscure hypermastigote parabasalian.

It must think it's an Oligotrich ciliate of some sort. Poor deluded thing. Since I seem to gravitate towards obscure organisms mentioned in a single paper in all the literature available/mentioned online, there is but a sole lonely drawing of this organism:

Parabasalid Kofoidia loriculata. Desperately in need of an SEM. Wood-eating gut endosymbiont from the Californian termite Kalotermes simplicicornis. Quick paper, anyone? (Light 1927 in Dogiel 1965 General Protozoology)

Unfortunately, I can't access the original Light 1927 paper (and ordering it may take a while...), so I'm gonna have to resort to scraps of information from Dogiel's 1965 General Protozoology, Adl et al. 2005 JEM and Kofoidia's Micro*scope page here.

So why did I randomly mention oligotrichs in the beginning? Superficially, hypermastigote parabasalia share quite a few features with ciliates. In fact, they're often described as 'slow-motion ciliates', as if they've been immersed in glycerol. Hypermastigote parabasalians, like ciliates, are covered in hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of flagella, as in this awesome Trichonympha SEM. However, unlike ciliates, they have a very different flagellar root structure, nuclear organisation (ciliates are weirder, probably), cellular organisation and the presence of 'parabasal fibres', for which the group is named. Furthermore, unlike most ciliates, Parabasalians are anaerobes, and lack conventional mitochondria, but rather possess hydrogen-generating hydrogenosomes (mentioned again here and here).

Trichonympha, a represenative hypermastigote, relative of Kofoidia. 40x DIC, mine.

While quite different and phylogenetically distant (excavates vs. alveolates), ciliates and hypermastigotes (the 'ciliated' parabasalia) so have some interesting cases of convergence. For one thing, both groups have representatives inhabiting various guts as commensals (or parasites), and in those cases, the organisms tend to be teeming with endosymbionts. Although considering how huge both of them are, it's not too suprising that even the free-living represenatives of both groups tend to attract tenants. As far as I know, next to nothing is known about parabasalian genome structure, so I can't really say much there, although obviously they lack the nuclear dimorphism the ciliates are famous for. One thing that I found particularly interesting in this example is the analogy to cirri, which are bundles of cilia found in many oxytrich ciliates, and often used for 'walking'. Kofoidia has tufts of flagella (same thing as cilia) bundled together into what Light 1927 termed 'loriculae', analogous to cirri!

These loriculae are arraged in a spiral (about 8-16 of then) and contain about thirty fairly long flagella (cirri tend to be shorter). These flagella seem bound lengthwise all the way to their tips, but fall apart upon fixation (the method of fixation isn't described). These bundles of flagella contract consecutively from left to right, as opposed to beating synchronously. (all from Dogiel 1965)

It's probably a very small thing, but somehow that jumped at me, that perhaps bundling up of flagella isn't so weird after all, as it first seems in ciliates. I wish more was known about this organism, including whether it may have any particular use for the 'loriculate' flagella, considering its termite gut commensal lifestyle. Cirri/loriculae make sense in benthic organisms (like many hypotrichs), since they obviously have a use for 'walking'. I don't know whether the term benthic is even applicable to gut endosymbionts...weird. Interestingly, the mastigont (flagellar root) systems form de novo upon cell division (micro*scope).

But probably what really jumped at me here is even more superficial -- this thing would look HAWT in SEM. Someone really needs to isolate and image Kofoidia!


It would be interesting to compare mechanisms of cytotaxis/cortical inheritance and patterning between ciliates, opalinids, parabasalians, Stephanopogon, etc., and see whether the principles are conserved (as one would expect), or if there may be different ways of regulating and inheriting cortical structure. Interestingly, all these ciliated looking things are bikonts, with unikonts exhibiting a much simpler cortical strcuture, at least in terms of flagella and basal bodies. Or so it seems at the moment. It seems that parabasalia have some basal body systems that form de novo, and some that are patterned in directed manner based on the remaining basal bodies (Adl et al. 2005 JEM). Hmmm, I've just found myself some more homework. Comparing cortical inheritance in parabasalia, opalinids and ciliates...

Dogiel 1965 turns out the be a wonderful source of tantalising organisms mentioned about ONCE in the distant past, and never looked at again. It's intriguing and annoying at the same time. Also, they actually paid attention to cell structure back then, which makes many of the old protozoology books a pleasure to look at and read. Even despite the systematic mess...

References:
ADL, S., SIMPSON, A., FARMER, M., ANDERSEN, R., ANDERSON, O., BARTA, J., BOWSER, S., BRUGEROLLE, G., FENSOME, R., FREDERICQ, S., JAMES, T., KARPOV, S., KUGRENS, P., KRUG, J., LANE, C., LEWIS, L., LODGE, J., LYNN, D., MANN, D., MCCOURT, R., MENDOZA, L., MOESTRUP, O., MOZLEY-STANDRIDGE, S., NERAD, T., SHEARER, C., SMIRNOV, A., SPIEGEL, F., & TAYLOR, M. (2005). The New Higher Level Classification of Eukaryotes with Emphasis on the Taxonomy of Protists The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, 52 (5), 399-451 DOI: 10.1111/j.1550-7408.2005.00053.x

Dogiel VA (1965) General Protozoology 2nd Ed. Oxford University Press.

MM09 answer: Hoplonympha - loaded with bacteria

I'm really behind on the answers. I'll do the easier one first, so MM08 will be next.

Remember this myserious organism from a while ago? Johan got it: it's Hoplonympha, a parabasalian gut endosymbiont! (Opisthokont was also on the right track)

Hoplonympha. top: SEM of whole organism (F indicates flagella), the long strips are actually ectosymbiotic bacteria, as evident in the TEM cross section on the bottom. CM - cytoplasmic [inner] membrane, OM - outer membrane, SL - S-layer. Note that unlike in Streblomastix (an oxymonad), the host cell is substantially more convoluted. (Image from Ohkuma 2008 Tr Microbiol(free access), originally from Noda et al. 2005 Env Microbiol)

A Streblomastix wannabe. Although in a completely different clade. Not too surprising, considering the similarity of their habitats, that such a strong evolutionary convergence may occur. Note that unlike Streblo, this organism also seems to contain bacterial endosymbionts inside it. It's quite a jungle of symbiotic relationships there in the termite and cockroach guts!

What are those bacteria doing? For one thing, Parabaslians are anaerobes, containing highly derived relict mitochondria called hydrogenosomes -- which, as their name suggests, generate hydrogen gas. Bare hydrogen is a relatively rare commodity in nature, so there's plenty of bacteria that crave it for their own metabolic exercises. Many of the symbiotic bacteria are methanogens, and use the hydrogen gas in their methane production pathways.

The exact functions of some other bacteria in this bizzare and complex ecosystem aren't well understood (Ohkuma 2008 Tr Microbiol). For many obligate anaerobes, however, the gut of various animals became a rare haven from the oxygen pollution their ancestors have wrecked the environment with a couple billion years ago. In termites and wood-eating roaches you have the extra advantage of free poorly digested (by the host) carbon sources entering in the form of wood cellulose. It's a nice deal: you nibble on yummy cellulose and the host is happy with your excrement. Of course, as with any nice deal, a hungry horde of other creatures congregates around the fun. So we end up with something like this:

A sample of the complex interactions between the gut protists, bacteria and the host. For more info, read the source Ohkuma 2008 Tr Microbiol, a freely accessible pdf of which was found by Johan.

And it's likely only the beginning of the story. And yes, the cellulose digestion is predominantly done by the protists, not the bacteria. Apparently, removal of bacteria by antibiotics did not stop the cellulose digestion, whereas a removal of the gut protists wrecks it.

Since it's meaningless to look at organisms without at least considering their place in The Tree, Hoplonympha seem to form a sister clade to Eucomonympha, which together group cozily with the Trichonymphidae, with some peculiar Staurojoeninidae getting in the way:

You may recognise Trichonympha, Eucomonympha, and Cochlosoma in the Trichomonads. Trichonympha are NOT Trichomonads, but are Hypermastigotes. Just sayin'. Trichomonads tend to be a little less 'hyper' with their karyomastigont (nucleus + flagellar apparatus) multiplication. Turns out we're steadily building up quite a collection of Parabasalians here...we have these people to partly blame: (Carpenter, Chow & Keeling 2009 JEM)

There's a really cool Parabasalian with ectosymbiotic bacteria that act much like flagella, propelling the organism by beating in a synchronised fashion. This partly where Margulis gets her "spirochaete = flagellum" fantasies from, where spirochaetes mafically became attached to the proto-eukaryote and somehow became its flagellum. Which is obviously eukaryotic, and devoid of DNA, and not even barely spirochaete-like, but never mind. Or, as TC-S would say: the eukaryotic flagellum differs from a spirochaete "in every visible respect possible" for a subcellular structure. =D We'll look at this cool organism at some other time, so I'll leave you in suspense for now.

Before I finally shut up, there's a slightly annoying gap in our exploration of Hypermastigotes: While we've by now glanced at Trichonympha, Eucomonympha and Hoplonympha, what about this mysterious Staurojoenina thing between them? Guess what, it also has ectosymbiotic bacteria!

Staurojoenina. The things on its ass in the SEM are spirochaetes, while the rest of it is covered in rod-shaped bacteria, with some flagellar tufts towards the anterior. Also littered with endosymbionts. Kind of cute, but Eucomonympha and Trichonympha are fuzzier. (Stingl et al. 2004 Microbiol)

Now to write up MM08 (a really cool one), and you guys still need to figure out MM10!

References:

CARPENTER, K., CHOW, L., & KEELING, P. (2009). Morphology, Phylogeny, and Diversity of
(Parabasalia: Hypermastigida) of the Wood-Feeding Cockroach
Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, 56 (4), 305-313 DOI: 10.1111/j.1550-7408.2009.00406.x

Noda, S., Inoue, T., Hongoh, Y., Kawai, M., Nalepa, C., Vongkaluang, C., Kudo, T., & Ohkuma, M. (2006). Identification and characterization of ectosymbionts of distinct lineages in Bacteroidales attached to flagellated protists in the gut of termites and a wood-feeding cockroach Environmental Microbiology, 8 (1), 11-20 DOI: 10.1111/j.1462-2920.2005.00860.x

OHKUMA, M. (2008). Symbioses of flagellates and prokaryotes in the gut of lower termites Trends in Microbiology, 16 (7), 345-352 DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2008.04.004

Stingl, U. (2004). Symbionts of the gut flagellate Staurojoenina sp. from Neotermes cubanus represent a novel, termite-associated lineage of Bacteroidales: description of 'Candidatus Vestibaculum illigatum' Microbiology, 150 (7), 2229-2235 DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.27135-0

Live Hypermastigote clips

To compensate for crappy blogging as of late (and the delays in the Great Review of Heterolobosea aka 'cruel and unusual punishment'), here's some random parabasalian swimming around: (Trichonympha methinks)

And a Spirotrichonympha?

Since I'm too lazy to ID this thing for sure at the moment, it would be great if some resident extreme excavate experts (XXX for short...?) could perhaps blurt it out. You know who you are. Also, are those Monocercomonoides, the little things swimming around?

I lack video editing software, so apologies for random background noise.
Got plenty more clips of Saccinobaculus, by the way. Should show up when I have time to re-blog about that wonderful organism (I think it deserves a much better post...) For now, enjoy the suspense =P
(and go hang out at the Mystery Micrograph - should be more interesting now that we've established it's a case of a multicellular parasite of a unicellular organism. Hint: As far as I know, there's only one documented case of that. )

Answer to MM#06 - Cochlosoma: a peculiar gut denizen

Christopher Taylor just got last week's Mystery Micrograph - it's Cochlosoma anatis, a trichomonad parasite of turkeys. It's sort of related to Pentatrichomonas (Hampl et al. 2006 Int J Sys & Evol Microbiol), although the support for that seems rather weak.

(Cooper et al. 1994 Avian Diseases; SEM of Cochlosoma anatis; Bar = 3um)

It reminds me of diplomonads (eg. Giardia) with its flat shape and adhesive sucker disc appendage - most likely a good adaptation for the intestinal environment. The ventral side is even more diplomonad-esque:

(Cooper et al. 1994 Avian Diseases; SEM of Cochlosoma anatis on intestinal mucosa(dorsal view), note the marks left by the parasite's 'suckers' in the vili; Bar = 5um)

Also, both are 'amitochondriate' anaerobes; trichomonads (and all the other parabasalians) have hydrogenosomes, which are ultra-reduced mitochondria with a pathway for producing hydrogen gas. Diplomonads and retortamonads lack hydrogenosomes, and have really taken the whole Mitochondria Lite business to the extreme - they have tiny non-descript mitosomes which are basically kept around for one metabolic purpose: FeS cluster metabolism*.

I digress, but that's pretty much all I have to say about Cochlosoma. Besides its peculiar shape, it seems to be your garden variety trichomonad with a case of Giardia-envy. Although who knows, these things are also grotesquely understudied...

Brace yourselves for the next mystery micrograph, which shall be posted SOON! done

*Thus far no eukaryote has been found without at least that part of the mitochondrial metabolic pathways left behind. Kreb's/TCA cycle can be quite 'easily' dispensed with or greatly reduced, despite it being the more 'famous' part of mitochondrial metabolism. Microsporidia (intracellular parasitic fungi) have the most reduced mitochondria. Turns out that their mitochondria lack ATP production altogether. The ATP is stolen from the host cell, and actually imported to the mitochondrion! (Tsaousis et al. Nature 2008)

Cooper, G., Shivaprasad, H., Bickford, A., Nordhausen, R., Munn, R., & Jeffrey, J. (1995). Enteritis in Turkeys Associated with an Unusual Flagellated Protozoan (Cochlosoma anatis) Avian Diseases, 39 (1) DOI: 10.2307/1592001

Hampl, V. (2006). Affiliation of Cochlosoma to trichomonads confirmed by phylogenetic analysis of the small-subunit rRNA gene and a new family concept of the order Trichomonadida INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC AND EVOLUTIONARY MICROBIOLOGY, 56 (1), 305-312 DOI: 10.1099/ijs.0.63754-0

Tsaousis, A., Kunji, E., Goldberg, A., Lucocq, J., Hirt, R., & Embley, T. (2008). A novel route for ATP acquisition by the remnant mitochondria of Encephalitozoon cuniculi Nature, 453 (7194), 553-556 DOI: 10.1038/nature06903

Termite gut microforay - excavate time!

A couple days ago a local basal winged termite crossed my path. Then, like two microtubules approaching each other below the threshold angle, our paths zippered up together and the poor sucker had its parabasalian jewels strewn exposed on the slide. No worries, the termite lives on, albeit as a carbon source for other life...

Now I have rather limited experience working with gut endosymbionts (my second time), so I suck. Also, I didn't have the right solutions for keeping the denizens from exploding osmotically. So my images suck too. Kind of like this poor exploding trichonympha:

Actually, they seemed to be less exploded later when mounted in 5% glycerol (or perhaps they managed to die in the termite while I was working on the first sample, and experienced less osmotic shock that way somehow...) The glycerol may have helped out in the refractive index matching a bit, although perhaps I just magically came across better DIC settings later... (I need to stop speaking in strings of hypotheses. [fundie]I believe the glycerol helped my imaging, and I shall guard my faith until forever! Yeah, take that, 'evidence'! In other news, termite endosymbiosis is older than the earth itself. [/fundie])

First thing I saw was some mystery nematode: (was wiggling about way too much for a decent image) How do you key out nematodes anyway???

Top right: Some mystery...thing. Looks like an ex-organism, judging by the characteristic bubbles that tend to form when anaerobic protists die. Then again, those may well be artefacts of something else. Any ideas?
Bottom:Trichomitopsis! (it actually looks really cute when not completely mutilated)

(the scalebar on the second one is wrong; that would be about 12.5um, forgot to adjust for 40x settings...)
A slightly better shitty image of streblomastix; how many flagella can you count at the anterior end?

And fresh from the Crap on the Bottom of the Slide department, some mystery flagellates(?), or pieces of dirt sitting on top of bacteria (Or elongated pieces of crap). Hey, identifying whether crap is/was alive or not is kind of difficult sometimes! Although I'm pretty sure (B) is a real thing. (D) also looks kind of flagellated... any ideas?

Edit 18.08.09: With Opisthokont's help, possible IDs: A - hexamita?; B, E - monocercomonoides; C- a thing with an axostyle, or hexamita)

Then I had fun with the carnival ride that is a prism and and couple polarisers (aka DIC):

Trees in the autumn sky...

...roots on the autumn ground?

Shiny!

Omg, pseudo-darkfield! (no it's not)


The helical spiraly thing is a piece of xylem, methinks; termites eat wood right? Well, trichonympha eat wood inside the termite... so you get pieces of plant matter in them. And then you find random stomata floating about, which I'm pretty sure are not some weird contamination from my arabidopsis screening stuff (kinda reused the slide...)

Those things freaking haunt me, even when not doing research! Amazing how it survived intact...stomata can be quite fragile. Although perhaps that's specifically when you need them not to be...
Actually, wait, question: how the hell do stomata get in there if termites eat wood? While plants do have stomata on their stems, 1. termites don't munch on epidermal tissue all that muchl; 2. I doubt woody plants have any once bark is formed. Maybe it -is- some weird contamination from the previous sample...luckily, not actually doing any real science here.

Speaking of stomata, I has works to do. We're kind of like plant dentists - working on 'mouthes' all day! Especially with gene names like four lips(FLP), too many mouthes(TMM), speechless(SPCH), mute(MUTE), moustaches(MUS), etc. We also have YODA. Apparently somewhere in the Arabidopsis genome lies a regulatory gene SUPERMAN and its suppressor KRYPTONITE. We like to keep ourselves entertained...[/derail]

Let me know if you want more 'microforays'!

"Sunday" Protist - Trichonympha returns!

Finally published today: Extreme Trichonympha sexiness:
(Carpenter, Chow and Keeling 2009. Morphology, Phylogeny, and Diversity of Trichonympha (Parabasalia: Hypermastigida) of the Wood-Feeding Cockroach Cryptocercus punctulatus. J Euk Microbiol 56:305-313
I stole these while the manuscript was in advance online publication, before the images were shrunk and butchered to fit print quality:




The little rod shaped things in 12-15 are some bacteria on the posterior end of the cell. 26-28 - after removing the anterior 'cap' (operculum). Scale bar is 10um in #2, for size comparison.

Trichonympha is this giant and utterly adorable wood-eating gut endosymbiont of early-branching dictyoptera (cockroaches and termites). Sadly, it's anaerobic and thereby difficult to play with unless you have a steady supply of termites going on in your lab, like those guys do. As for the wood roach from which these particular critters come from, it has to be ordered. This roach also has the amazing Saccinobaculus...Trichonympha can also be found in basal termites; we're lucky to have some native ones here in Vancouver (alas, devoid of Saccinobaculus =( )

It seems like cockroaches and termites formed endosymbiotic relationships with the protists before the two diverged - both groups have endosymbionts in their basal lineages, and lose them later on. The protistan endosymbiont diversity is wonderful: you have the aforementioned and much beloved 'snake-in-a-bag' (Saccinobaculus; can you tell I'm obsessed yet?) and fellow oxymonad companions like Streblomastix - a long cell with 'docking' for even longer episymbiont bacteria on it; Trichomitopsis and its protruding axostyle when it curls up into a ball; accompanied by loads of symbiont and parasitic bacteria.

The wood-eating dictyoptera require endosymbionts to digest cellulose, since we metazoans suck at it. The more derived termites can get by with bacteria it seems; but interestingly the protists are actually doing the digesting themselves in the basal termites - killing off the gut bacteria does not prevent the termite from being able to digest the wood, if I recall correctly from class... (was a while ago since we sliced up some termites and cockroaches). Either way, you end up with this complex society with protists of all sorts with bacterial endo- and episymbionts, as well as free-living forms. I find it amazing how this system survived locked inside the termite/roach guts for millions of years; it would not survive without them!

Most of the protists are anaerobic and lack conventional mitochondria, instead carrying highly reduced relics as mitosomes or hydrogenosomes; the latter produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct of their metabolic pathways. It was once thought those organisms were primarily amitochondriate, thus shoving them to the base of the eukaryotic tree, also known as the
Archezoan Hypothesis, put forth by Tom Cavalier-Smith; later this hypothesis was rejected as relics of ancient mitochondrial gene transfers were found in some of the host nuclei and the evidence accumulating for one of the prime archaezoans, microsporidia, being found to branch smack in the middle of fungi (beginnings of demise of Archaezoa discussed in Keeling 1998 BioEssays; free access).

It's 4am and I should stop procrastinating with my assignment... but here ya go. Aren't protists so cute and awesome? ^.^

CARPENTER, K., CHOW, L., & KEELING, P. (2009). Morphology, Phylogeny, and Diversity of Trichonympha(Parabasalia: Hypermastigida) of the Wood-Feeding Cockroach Cryptocercus punctulatus
Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, 56 (4), 305-313 DOI: 10.1111/j.1550-7408.2009.00406.x

Sunday(?) Protist - Eucomonympha

Internet broken at home, and also incredibly busy: lots of research stuff, final this Friday, another summer course just started, and unofficially auditing a microscopy course that's happening right now. Basically, back to chaos as usual.

So out of laziness, a cute Eucomonympha to oogle at:

(Carpenter & Keeling 2007 J Euk Microbiol)

Cockroach gut endosymbiont, eats wood, anaerobe. Scale bars 20um, so this thing is quite humongous. Surface consists of multitudes of flagella interspersed with spirochaete ectosymbionts, and some other bacteria. I'd love to do cell biology on this thing, but that creator made those things anaerobic to inconvenience our attempts to deny his existence. What a sly bastard!

Ok, they're making me ditch protists for the next little while... the cruelty! =(

There's also a recently accepted (but still in advance publication) paper full of absolutely drool-worthy Trichonympha SEMs by the same guys... will save for later.

Sunday Protist -- Trichonympha

(http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artmar03/rhtermite.html)

Trichonympha

Termite gut symbiont, 200-300 microns long (huge for a protist). On the inside, bottom half, are pieces of wood -- termite gut protists digest cellulose for the termite, who feeds on the metabolic byproducts. The round thing in the centre is the nucleus (with permanently condensed chromosomes), and rows upon rows of flagella. Being a parabasalian, this creature lacks mitochondria like ours -- instead, they have been reduced to hydrogenosomes, which produce hydrogen gas.

The termite gut is a lush ecosystem FULL of cool things, more of which will be posted later. You also have episymbiotic bacteria covering some of the symbiotic protists, resulting in an ecosystem-inside-an-ecosystem type of environment.

Hard to resist the compelling urge to start slicing open random insect guts in hopes of finding protists...