CINARPATHOBACTER
I've been involved in this European
Commission FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IRSES Marie Curie Action, an International
Research Staff Exchange Scheme on the topic CIliates as NAtural
Reservoir of potentially PATHOgenic BACTERia: an ecological, functional and evolutionary
genomic investigation.
Protists (Protozoa) such as Acanthamoeba
can act as Trojan horses for opportunistic pathogens of humans and
animals. Recent studies have shown that natural occurring bacterial symbionts of ciliates have a strong phylogenetic
affiliation to such pathogens, like Rickettsia
and Francisella. These observations
raised the question whether ciliates may also represent natural reservoirs
for potentially pathogenic bacteria, especially in tropical regions where the
environmental conditions favor microbial growth and fast evolution. Within
this framework, several groups from around the globe have been and still are cooperating to
describe and investigate already known as well as newly discovered bacterial endosymbioses in ciliates.
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