Pathways to parasitism in the kinetoplastids
Primary supervisor: Dr. Tom Williams, School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
Second supervisor: Prof. Wendy Gibson, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol
CASE supervisor: Dr. David Bass, Cefas
The kinetoplastids are a group of singlecelled eukaryotic parasites that cause
devastating diseases of both animals and
plants. In humans, kinetoplastids such as
Trypanosoma and Leishmania cause
diseases ranging from sleeping sickness
and Chagas disease to leishmaniasis,
and are a particular concern in the
developing world. The virulence of
kinetoplastid parasites is underpinned by
a suite of cellular and genomic
adaptations (Lukes et al. 2014). These
include complex parasitic lifecycles that
sometimes involve multiple hosts - such
as the tsetse fly vector for sleeping
sickness - the evolution of new effector
A novel parasite of polychaete worms, Paramyxa, revealed by
proteins for interfering with host cells, and
combined molecular and microscopy techniques in Dr. Bass'
the re-organisation of internal cellular
team at Cefas.
compartments such as the peroxisomes
and mitochondria, which contain an unusual DNA-rich structure, the kinetoplast, after which this
group of organisms was named. We do not yet know the order in which these structures evolved,
nor which were the key evolutionary innovations that catalysed the evolution of parasitism within
the clade.
Recent environmental DNA surveys have revealed that close relatives of kinetoplastid
parasites are some of the most abundant organisms in the world’s oceans, and monitoring of UK
fish and shellfish stocks has identified several novel fish and crustacean parasites that represent
early-diverging members of the kinetoplastid clade. These parasites are distantly related to those
causing disease in humans, but potentially share some of the same genomic adaptations. The aim
of this project is to sequence the genomes of three of these new parasites, and compare them to
existing kinetoplastid genomes, in order to address the following questions:
1. What is the environmental diversity of basal kinetoplastids, and how prevalent are they in UK
aquaculture stocks?
2. How was the suite of adaptations observed in human-infecting kinetoplastids assembled during
the evolution of the group, and which features are shared with the novel aquacultural parasites?
3. Can we identify parasitic genes shared across the kinetoplastids that might represent new drug
targets?
This project is an industrial CASE collaboration between Dr. Tom Williams (Earth Sciences,
University of Bristol), Prof. Wendy Gibson (Biological Sciences, Bristol) and Dr. David Bass
(Cefas), and represents an exciting training opportunity to learn distinct but highly complementary
sets of skills: bioinformatics (including genome assembly and analysis) from Dr. Williams, cell
biology from Prof. Gibson and parasitological methods (sampling, histopathology, in situ
hybridisation, transmission electron microscopy) at Cefas. You will be based at Bristol, but the
project will also include a secondment at Cefas in Weymouth. These skills will equip you not only
for a career in academic research, but also for a variety of other fields (government laboratory
work, science applied to policy, diagnostics) and are valued in and transferable to data science,
computing, and finance.
Contact Tom Williams ([email protected]) with informal inquiries about the project.
Reference:Lukes et al. 2014 “Evolution of parasitism in kinetoplastid flagellates.” Mol Biochem
Parasitol 195: 115-122.