Constitutive Secretion in Tetrahymena thermophila

Adolescence in Tetrahymena thermophila.

The development of sexual maturity in Tetrahymena thermophila has been shown to include an intermediate stage, adolescence, during which cells are capable of mating with mature cells but not other adolescent cells. When the progeny of successfully mated cells are grown logarithmically and tested frequently for the ability to mate, they are unable to form mating pairs for about 65 generations. T...

Tetrahymena thermophila

What does it look like? Tetrahymena thermophila is a unicellular eukaryote which is larger than many mammalian cells (~30 × 50 μm). It swims in temperate freshwater environments, waving its coat of cilia (Figure 1, inset) and phagocytosing food propelled into its gullet. Hunger induces Tetrahymena cells to undergo a transformation, including growth of a long posterior cilium and more coordinate...

Secretion of functional human enzymes by Tetrahymena thermophila

BACKGROUND The non-pathogenic ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila is one of the best-characterized unicellular eucaryotes used in various research fields. Previous work has shown that this unicellular organism provides many biological features to become a high-quality expression system, like multiplying to high cell densities with short generation times in bioreactors. In addition, the expression o...

Sequencing the Tetrahymena thermophila Genome

The Tetrahymena thermophila phagosome proteome.

In vertebrates, phagocytosis occurs mainly in specialized cells of the immune system and serves as a primary defense against invading pathogens, but it also plays a role in clearing apoptotic cells and in tissue remodeling during development. In contrast, unicellular eukaryotes, such as the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, employ phagocytosis to ingest and degrade other microorganisms to meet t...