Mixotricha paradoxa
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| Mixotricha paradoxa Sutherland, 1933 |
Mixotricha paradoxa is a species of protozoan that lives inside the termite species Mastotermes darwiniensis and has multiple bacterial symbionts. The name originated when Australian biologist J.L. Sutherland, who first described Mixotricha in 1933, named it “the paradoxical being with mixed-up hairs”.
[edit] Symbiosis
Mixotricha is a very interesting species of protist because of the many symbiotic relationships it forms. In relation to termites (M. darwinensis), Mixotricha and its relatives, including Trichonympha, live in the gut of the termites and helps them digest cellulose, a major component of the wood they eat. Without Mixotricha, the termites could not survive.
Mixotricha forms mutualistic relationships with bacteria living inside the termite as well. While it has four anterior flagella, Mixotricha does not use them for locomotion, but more as a steering appendage. For locomotion, about 250,000 hairlike Treponema spirochetes, a species of spiral-shaped bacteria are attached to the cell surface and provide the cell with cilia like movements. Mixotricha also has an ordered pattern of rod shaped bacteria on the surface of the cell, as well as spherical bacteria endosymbionts inside the cell, which function as a mitochondria, which Mixotricha lacks. There are a total of four bacterial symbionts.
[edit] Genome
According to Margulis and Sagan (2001), Mixotricha have five genomes, as they form very close symbiotic relationships with four types of bacteria. They consider Mixotricha paradoxa the poster organism for symbiogenesis. Mixotricha is a composite of five organisms with five different genomes, which is why Hunt et. al. (2001, 2002) insist that this organism has five genomes.
