Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2015 Feb;142 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S120-7.
doi: 10.1017/S0031182014001693. Epub 2014 Dec 22.

Sexual reproduction and genetic exchange in parasitic protists

Gareth D Weedall  1 , Neil Hall  1
Affiliations
Review

Sexual reproduction and genetic exchange in parasitic protists

Gareth D Weedall et al. Parasitology. 2015 Feb.

Abstract

A key part of the life cycle of an organism is reproduction. For a number of important protist parasites that cause human and animal disease, their sexuality has been a topic of debate for many years. Traditionally, protists were considered to be primitive relatives of the 'higher' eukaryotes, which may have diverged prior to the evolution of sex and to reproduce by binary fission. More recent views of eukaryotic evolution suggest that sex, and meiosis, evolved early, possibly in the common ancestor of all eukaryotes. However, detecting sex in these parasites is not straightforward. Recent advances, particularly in genome sequencing technology, have allowed new insights into parasite reproduction. Here, we review the evidence on reproduction in parasitic protists. We discuss protist reproduction in the light of parasitic life cycles and routes of transmission among hosts.

Keywords: meiosis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Simplified schematic representations of the life cycles of vector- and fecal–oral-transmitted parasites. (A) The Plasmodium falciparum life cycle, which has two cycles of asexual growth, one in each host, and the sexual stages (grey shading) which span transmission from one host to another; (B) the T. brucei life cycle, in which the sexual stages appear to take place in the insect host, after a cycle of asexual cell divisions but before transmission to the mammalian host; (C) the Cryptosporidium and Eimeria life cycle, in which the sexual stages all take place within the single host and cysts are passed into the environment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Akopyants N. S., Kimblin N., Secundino N., Patrick R., Peters N., Lawyer P., Dobson D. E., Beverley S. M. and Sacks D. L. (2009). Demonstration of genetic exchange during cyclical development of Leishmania in the sand fly vector. Science 324, 265–268. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anderson T. J., Haubold B., Williams J. T., Estrada-Franco J. G., Richardson L., Mollinedo R., Bockarie M., Mokili J., Mharakurwa S., French N., Whitworth J., Velez I. D., Brockman A. H., Nosten F., Ferreira M. U. and Day K. P. (2000). Microsatellite markers reveal a spectrum of population structures in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Molecular and Biochemical Evolution 17, 1467–1482. - PubMed
    1. Baldauf S. L. (2003). The deep roots of eukaryotes. Science 300, 1703–1706. - PubMed
    1. Bloomfield G., Skelton J., Ivens A., Tanaka Y. and Kay R. R. (2010). Sex determination in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Science 330, 1533–1536. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Boyle J. P., Rajasekar B., Saeij J. P., Ajioka J. W., Berriman M., Paulsen I., Roos D. S., Sibley L. D., White M. W. and Boothroyd J. C. (2006). Just one cross appears capable of dramatically altering the population biology of a eukaryotic pathogen like Toxoplasma gondii. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103, 10514–10519. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types