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Science 28 September 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5846, pp. 1921 - 1926
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143837
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Reports

Genomic Minimalism in the Early Diverging Intestinal Parasite Giardia lamblia

Hilary G. Morrison,1* Andrew G. McArthur,1 Frances D. Gillin,2 Stephen B. Aley,3 Rodney D. Adam,4 Gary J. Olsen,5 Aaron A. Best,6 W. Zacheus Cande,7 Feng Chen,8 Michael J. Cipriano,1 Barbara J. Davids,2 Scott C. Dawson,9 Heidi G. Elmendorf,10 Adrian B. Hehl,11 Michael E. Holder,1 Susan M. Huse,1 Ulandt U. Kim,1 Erica Lasek-Nesselquist,1 Gerard Manning,12 Anuranjini Nigam,4 Julie E. J. Nixon,1 Daniel Palm,13 Nora E. Passamaneck,1 Anjali Prabhu,4 Claudia I. Reich,5 David S. Reiner,2 John Samuelson,14 Staffan G. Svard,15 Mitchell L. Sogin1

The genome of the eukaryotic protist Giardia lamblia, an important human intestinal parasite, is compact in structure and content, contains few introns or mitochondrial relics, and has simplified machinery for DNA replication, transcription, RNA processing, and most metabolic pathways. Protein kinases comprise the single largest protein class and reflect Giardia's requirement for a complex signal transduction network for coordinating differentiation. Lateral gene transfer from bacterial and archaeal donors has shaped Giardia's genome, and previously unknown gene families, for example, cysteine-rich structural proteins, have been discovered. Unexpectedly, the genome shows little evidence of heterozygosity, supporting recent speculations that this organism is sexual. This genome sequence will not only be valuable for investigating the evolution of eukaryotes, but will also be applied to the search for new therapeutics for this parasite.

1 Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543–1015, USA.
2 Department of Pathology, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of California, San Diego, CA 92103–8416, USA.
3 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968–0519, USA.
4 Departments of Medicine and Immunobiology, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, AZ 85724–5049, USA.
5 Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
6 Department of Biology, Hope College, Holland, MI 49423, USA.
7 University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–3200, USA.
8 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19194, USA.
9 University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
10 Biology Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
11 Institute of Parasitology, University of Zürich, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
12 Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA 92037–1099, USA.
13 Centre for Microbiological Preparedness, Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, 171 82 Solna, Sweden.
14 Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA 02118–2932, USA.
15 Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, SE-751 24 Uppsala, Sweden.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: morrison{at}mbl.edu

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