ReviewParasites & vectors2013
The first suicides: a legacy inherited by parasitic protozoans from prokaryote ancestors.
Review in Parasites & vectors, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Putrescine Depletion inPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Distribution of Genes Associated With Regulated Cell Death Is Decoupled From the Mitochondrial Phenotypes Within Unicellular Eukaryotic Hosts.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2020Article
- Insights into the evolution and drug susceptibility of Babesia duncani from the sequence of its mitochondrial and apicoplast genomes.International journal for parasitology · 2019Article
- Effect of Blastocystis sp. in dengue patients-Increase in the treatment cost and exacerbation of symptoms.PloS one · 2019Article
- Role of inositol polyphosphates in programed cell death in Dictyostelium discoideum and its developmental life cycle.Molecular and cellular biochemistry · 2018Article
- An Apoptotic and Endosymbiotic Explanation of the Warburg and the Inverse Warburg Hypotheses.International journal of molecular sciences · 2018Review
- Ancestral State Reconstruction of the Apoptosis Machinery in the Common Ancestor of Eukaryotes.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2018Article
- Guidelines and recommendations on yeast cell death nomenclature.Microbial cell (Graz, Austria) · 2018Review
- Viruses and mobile elements as drivers of evolutionary transitions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- Horizontal transfer of β-carbonic anhydrase genes from prokaryotes to protozoans, insects, and nematodes.Parasites & vectors · 2016Article
- Granular Formation during Apoptosis in Blastocystis sp. Exposed to Metronidazole (MTZ).PloS one · 2016Article
- Review
- Subverting lysosomal function inMicrobial cell (Graz, Austria) · 2015Article
- An inhibitor-driven study for enhancing the selectivity of indirubin derivatives towards leishmanial Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3 over leishmanial cdc2-related protein kinase 3.Parasites & vectors · 2014Article
- Higher Caspase-like activity in symptomatic isolates of Blastocystis spp.Parasites & vectors · 2014Article
- Mitochondrial genome of Babesia orientalis, apicomplexan parasite of water buffalo (Bubalus babalis, Linnaeus, 1758) endemic in China.Parasites & vectors · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is more than 25 years since the first report that a protozoan parasite could die by a process resulting in a morphological phenotype akin to apoptosis. Since then these phenotypes have been observed in many unicellular parasites, including trypanosomatids and apicomplexans, and experimental evidence concerning the molecular pathways that are involved is growing. These observations support the view that this form of programmed cell death is an ancient one that predates the evolution of multicellularity. Here we review various hypotheses that attempt to explain the origin of apoptosis, and look for support for these hypotheses amongst the parasitic protists as, with the exception of yeast, most of the work on death mechanisms in unicellular organisms has focussed on them. We examine the role that addiction modules may have played in the original eukaryote cell and the part played by mitochondria in the execution of present day cells, looking for examples from Leishmania spp. Trypanosoma spp. and Plasmodium spp. In addition, the expanding knowledge of proteases, nucleases and other molecules acting in protist execution pathways has enabled comparisons to be made with extant Archaea and bacteria and with biochemical pathways that evolved in metazoans. These comparisons lend support to the original sin hypothesis but also suggest that present-day death pathways may have had multifaceted beginnings.
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