Projects & Grants
| Mitochondrial genome and transcriptome of euglenozoans: in search for unique and general trends of organellar nucleic acids management | |
|---|---|
| Project Id | 26-20659S |
| Main solver | prof. MSc. Vjačeslav Jurčenko, Ph.D. |
| Period | 1/2026 - 12/2028 |
| Provider | Standardní projekt GA ČR |
| State | solved |
| Anotation | Parasitic kinetoplastid and free-living diplonemid protists evolved the most unusual mitochondrial (kinetoplast) genomes documented so far. In the model flagellate Trypanosoma brucei, we will dissect the machinery responsible for its replication, maintenance, transcription and extensive RNA editing. For this, we will apply recent extensive MitoTag-based knowledge of the kinetoplast protein components, new visualization tools such as expansion and atomic force microscopy, and a novel computational framework T-Aligner that we have designed. We will also analyze the biggest known organellar DNA of Namystynia, with its hallucinated sequences of extreme mechanics, and map the deletions in mitochondrial genome of economically important fish-infecting trypanosomes. Our preliminary data point to the existence of a yet undescribed protein import pathway in the T. brucei mitochondrion, which we aim to fully characterize. Our aim is to present a holistic model of the kinetoplast, a defining structure of trypanosomatids, as well as the evolutionary framework that led to its emergence. |
| Total Costs | 11 529 000 CZK |
