Home • Rozella allomycis CSF55
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A). Mature (brown) and immature (unpigmented) resting sporangia of the parasite Rozella inside hyphae of the host water mold photo credit: Timothy James ([email protected]) Allomyces.
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B). Zoospores of Rozella. Scale bar = 20 μm (A); 5 μm ). photo credit: Timothy James ([email protected])

The genome sequence and gene predictions of Rozella allomycis were not determined by the JGI, but were downloaded from NCBI and have been published (James TY et al., 2013). Please note that this copy of the genome is not maintained by the author and is therefore not automatically updated.

Rozella allomycis is the first member of the recently described phylum Cryptomycota (Jones et al. 2011a) to have its genome sequenced. The genus Rozella is mostly known to parasitize water molds, and R. allomycis is an obligate parasite of the Blastocladiomycotan fungus Allomyces. The phylum is otherwise known exclusively from a large number of environmental DNA sequences produced in aquatic, marine, and other habitats (Jones et al. 2011b; Lara et al. 2011). R. allomycis grows within the host as naked protoplasm, and reproduces through the production of ephemeral zoosporangia or chitinous, thick-walled resting sporangia. The parasite requires the host to produce the cell wall of the zoosporangium, which at maturity cleave into numerous zoospores with a single flagellum. The zoospore, upon finding a suitable host, retracts its flagellum, develops a cell wall, and injects its cytoplasm into the host. The parasite protoplasm is suspected of being capable of phagocytosing the host's cytoplasm (Powell 1984). The ancestral characteristic of phagotrophy as well as phylogenetic analyses have placed the Cryptomycota at the base of the fungal tree (James et al. 2006). Recently, the analysis of the genome sequence of Rozella suggested that Cryptomycota and the obligate eukaryotic parasites known as Microsporidia are related (James et al. 2013). Microsporidia are well known for their fast rate of evolution, including loss of the mitochondrion and reduction of nuclear genome size. Shared characteristics of Cryptomycota and Microsporidia include presence of a chitinous cell wall, growth inside the host as a naked protoplasm, presence of ATP transport proteins acquired from Chlamydia, and remarkably little else.

 

 

 

 

 

Genome Reference(s)

References
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  • Jones MD, Richards TA, Hawksworth DL, Bass D. Validation and justification of the phylum name Cryptomycota phyl. nov. IMA Fungus. 2011 Dec;2(2):173-5. doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2011.02.02.08. Epub 2011 Nov 11. PubMed PMID: 22679602; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3359815.
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  • Lara E, Moreira D, López-García P. The environmental clade LKM11 and Rozella form the deepest branching clade of fungi. Protist. 2010 Jan;161(1):116-21. doi: 10.1016/j.protis.2009.06.005. Epub 2009 Aug 11. PubMed PMID: 19674933.
  • Powell, M. J. (1984). Fine structure of the unwalled thallus of Rozella polyphagi in its host Polyphagus euglenae. Mycologia 76: 1039-1048.