Dr. Sara Zimmer co-authors a new publication on genome structure and RNA editing in Vickermania

Sara Zimmer, PhD, in the Department of Biomedical Sciences is the co-author of an article titled, “Evolutionary divergent kinetoplast genome structure and RNA editing patterns in the trypanosomatid Vickermania,” published in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

In microorganisms, gains and losses of pieces of DNA, such as bacterial plasmids or pathogenicity islands, impact their survival and host evasion. However, DNA gains and losses also happen to organisms in far-flung positions on tree of life that we know very little about. The researchers studied two closely related insect parasites that are evolutionarily far removed from commonly-studied single-celled organisms. They showed that loss of certain non-chromosomal DNA molecules drives major changes in how these parasites use the main energy-generating pathway of their mitochondria. This suggests that the mitochondrial electron transport system may be more flexible, and its functions more varied, than previously imagined for all cells that possess it.