Molecular and Cellular Evolution of Microbial Eukaryotes
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Newcastle
EMBO World 09
Molecular Evolution Workshop 2010
Trachipleistophora hominis

Dr. Cedric Simillion

Contact information

  • Phone number:
  • e-mail adress: cedric.simillion (at) psb.vib-ugent.be

Work description

Background

I have an MsC. in biotechnology from Ghent University and did my PhD the bioinformatics lab of Yves Van de Peer in Ghent, Belgium. During my PhD, I have mainly worked on the structural evolution of genomes. My research involved developing software (i-ADHoRe) to detect traces of ancient large-scale gene duplication events in various genomes such as the flowering plants Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa and bony fish Takifugu rubripes

Current work

The remnant mitochondrion (mitosome) of Trachipleistophora hominis. The short arrows define the border of the microsporidian, which is living inside a rabbit kidney cell, and the stars indicate the rabbit kidney cell mitochondria. The long arrow indicates the Trachipleistophora mitosome which reacts strongly with the specific antibody to the Trachipleistophora mitochondrial Hsp70. From Embley et al. 2003.
The main function of the mitochondrion in aerobic eukaryotes is commonly regarded to generate energy through oxidative phosphorylation. However, work in our lab and other places has shown that anaerobic or parasitic eukaryotes that lack oxidative phosphorylation, still contain organelles derived from mitochondria. These new organelles, called mitochondrial homologues to denote their common ancestry with mitochondria, are of two types - hydrogenosomes and mitosomes. Hydrogenosomes make hydrogen and are found in diverse eukaryotes including Trichomonas vaginalis. Mitosomes are found in other important human parasites such as Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia and Microsporidia such as Encephalitozoon and Trachipleistophora, and their functions are unknown.

The goal of my research is to investigate the structure and function of these mitochondrial homologues by comparing the mitochondrial proteomes and interactomes of a broad set of eukaryotic proteomes, including both organisms with bona fide mitochondria as well as organisms featuring hydrogenosomes and mitosomes.

Apart from the people in our group, I also collaborate with Jennifer Hallinan and Neil Wipat for the analysis of interactomes.

Cedric has just moved back to Belgium to work in the Department of Plant Systems Biology, Ghent University, his new contact details are:

Dr Cedric Simillion

VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology

Ghent University

Technologiepark 927

9052 Ghent

Belgium

Cedric's publications

  • Simillion C, Janssens K, Sterck L and Van de Peer Y. i-ADHoRe 2.0: an improved tool to detect degenerated genomic homology using genomic profiles. Bioinformatics. vol 24 p. 127-8 (2008). pubmed
  • Carlton JM, Hirt RP, Silva JC, Delcher AL, Schatz M, Zhao Q, Wortman JR, Bidwell SL, Alsmark UC, Besteiro S, Sicheritz-Ponten T, Noel CJ, Dacks JB, Foster PG, Simillion C, Van de Peer Y, Miranda-Saavedra D, Barton GJ, Westrop GD, Muller S, Dessi D, Fiori PL, Ren Q, Paulsen I, Zhang H, Bastida-Corcuera FD, Simoes-Barbosa A, Brown MT, Hayes RD, Mukherjee M, Okumura CY, Schneider R, Smith AJ, Vanacova S, Villalvazo M, Haas BJ, Pertea M, Feldblyum TV, Utterback TR, Shu CL, Osoegawa K, de Jong PJ, Hrdy I, Horvathova L, Zubacova Z, Dolezal P, Malik SB, Logsdon JM Jr, Henze K, Gupta A, Wang CC, Dunne RL, Upcroft JA, Upcroft P, White O, Salzberg SL, Tang P, Chiu CH, Lee YS, Embley TM, Coombs GH, Mottram JC, Tachezy J, Fraser-Liggett CM and Johnson PJ. Draft genome sequence of the sexually transmitted pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis. Science. vol 315 p. 207-12 (2007). pubmed
  • Blomme T, Vandepoele K, De Bodt S, Simillion C, Maere S and Van de Peer Y. The gain and loss of genes during 600 million years of vertebrate evolution. Genome Biol. vol 7 p. R43 (2006). pubmed
  • Gevers D, Vandepoele K, Simillion C and Van de Peer Y. Gene duplication and biased functional retention of paralogs in bacterial genomes. Trends Microbiol. vol 12 p. 148-54 (2004). pubmed
  • Simillion C, Vandepoele K and Van de Peer Y. Recent developments in computational approaches for uncovering genomic homology. Bioessays. vol 26 p. 1225-35 (2004). pubmed
  • Simillion C, Vandepoele K, Saeys Y and Van de Peer Y. Building genomic profiles for uncovering segmental homology in the twilight zone. Genome Res. vol 14 p. 1095-106 (2004). pubmed
  • Vandepoele K, Simillion C and and Van de Peer Y. The quest for genomic homology. Curr. Genomics. vol 5 p. 299-308 (2004).
  • Raes J, Vandepoele K, Simillion C, Saeys Y and Van de Peer Y. Investigating ancient duplication events in the Arabidopsis genome. J Struct Funct Genomics. vol 3 p. 117-29 (2003). pubmed
  • Vandepoele K, Simillion C and Van de Peer Y. Evidence that rice and other cereals are ancient aneuploids. Plant Cell. vol 15 p. 2192-202 (2003). pubmed
  • Simillion C, Vandepoele K, Van Montagu MC, Zabeau M and Van de Peer Y. The hidden duplication past of Arabidopsis thaliana. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. vol 99 p. 13627-32 (2002). pubmed
  • Vandepoele K, Saeys Y, Simillion C, Raes J and Van De Peer Y. The automatic detection of homologous regions (ADHoRe) and its application to microcolinearity between Arabidopsis and rice. Genome Res. vol 12 p. 1792-801 (2002). pubmed
  • Vandepoele K, Simillion C and Van de Peer Y. Detecting the undetectable: uncovering duplicated segments in Arabidopsis by comparison with rice. Trends Genet. vol 18 p. 606-8 (2002). pubmed