Mark van der Giezen (Biosciences, University of Exeter) will be speaking about the Biochemical and evolutionary peculiarities of the hyper-prevalent parasitic eukaryote Blastocystis in a seminar held next Wednesday (October 4th 2017) at 12:00 in the UCL Roberts Building, Room 106.

Abstract for the seminar

Mitochondria are the main sites of ATP generation in eukaryotes. These organelles are derived from a bacterial endosymbiont that entered a host cell over 1.5 billion years ago. Comparative genetics has made it clear that the mitochondrion is monophyletic in origin. Therefore, the mitochondrial endosymbiont evolved independently in various aerobic and anaerobic lineages. This has resulted inn assemblage of heterogeneous organelle variants including classic text-book mitochondria, hydrogenosomes and mitosomes. Recently, studies investigating less well-studied eukaryotic groups have resulted in the realisation that mitochondrial diversity is even more fluid than previously thought. In this talk I will provide an overview of the field of mitochondrial evolution using examples of the cell biological an biochemical variety found in various anaerobic microbial eukaryotes, with an emphasis on the human intestinal pathogen Blastocystis.