Unravelling the Phylogeny of a Common Intestinal Protist: Intrageneric Diversity of Endolimax.

Hocke EF, Jamy M, Burki F, Clark CG, Stensvold CR

Protist 173 (5) 125908 [2022-10-00; online 2022-09-07]

Endolimax nana is a common endobiont of the human intestine, but members of the genus have also been reported in non-human hosts and in non-intestinal organs. Limited information is available regarding the genetic diversity of Endolimax, which is necessary to delineate species, host specificity and potential differences in clinical impact on the host. Here, we used cloning of PCR products followed by Sanger sequencing and next-generation PacBio Sequencing to obtain Endolimax-related nuclear ribosomal gene sequences and undertook a phylogenetic analysis to gain additional insight into the taxonomy of Endolimax and related organisms. The new sequences confirmed that E. nana forms a discrete clade within the Archamoebae and is related to Endolimax piscium and Iodamoeba. However, we identified substantial sequence divergence within E. nana and evidence for two distinct clades, which we propose to name E. nana ribosomal lineage 1 and E. nana ribosomal lineage 2. Both of the sequencing approaches applied in the study helped us to improve our understanding of genetic diversity across Endolimax, and it is likely that wider application of next-generation sequencing technologies will facilitate the generation of Endolimax-related DNA sequence data and help complete our understanding of its phylogenetic position and intrageneric diversity.

Fabien Burki

SciLifeLab Fellow

PubMed 36152390

DOI 10.1016/j.protis.2022.125908

Crossref 10.1016/j.protis.2022.125908

pii: S1434-4610(22)00053-0


Publications 9.5.0