Blastocrithidia


Blastocrithidia is a genus of parasitic flagellate protist belonging to the family Trypanosomatidae. It is a monoxenous parasite of heteropteran insects, mainly inhabiting their hindgut and glands.

Characteristics

In addition to Blastocrithidia, one-host trypanosomatids from hemipteran and dipteran insects have been traditionally placed in genera Crithidia, Leptomonas, Herpetomonas, Rhynchoidomonas, and Wallaceina. Blastocrithidia is characterized by epimastigote morphological forms, whereas opisthomastigotes and endomastigotes are exclusive features of the genera Herpetomonas and Wallaceina, respectively. Blastocrithidia is also able to produce resistant cysts.

Systematics

The etymology of the genus name Blastocrithidia derives from the two Ancient Greek words, meaning "sprout, scion, child or descendant", and, meaning "small grain of barley".
The genus includes the following species.Blastocrithidia caliroae Lipa, Carl & Valentine 1977Blastocrithidia cyrtomeni Caicedo et al. 2011Blastocrithidia euschisti Hanson & McGheeBlastocrithidia familiaris Tieszen et al. 1986Blastocrithidia gerridis Laird 1959Blastocrithidia largi Maslov and Lukes 2010Blastocrithidia leptocoridis Blastocrithidia miridarum Podlipaev & Frolov 1987Blastocrithidia papi Frolov and Kostygov, 2016Blastocrithidia raabei Lipa 1966Blastocrithidia triatomae Cerisola et al. 1971Blastocrithidia vagoi Tuzet & Laporte 1965Blastocrithidia nonstop Votýpka & Lukeš, sp. nov.

Genomics

Genetic code

Blastocrithidia uses in its nuclear genome an alternative genetic code characterized by all three canonical stop codons reassigned to sense codons.
Amino acids biochemical propertiesnonpolarpolarbasicacidicTermination: stop codon