Henriquez Fiona L, Mooney Ronnie, Bandel Timothy, Giammarini Elisa, Zeroual Mohammed, Fiori Pier Luigi, Margarita Valentina, Rappelli Paola, Dessì Daniele
School of Health and Life Sciences, University of West Scotland, Paisley, United Kingdom.
Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Università degli Studi di Sassari, Sassari, Italy.
Front Microbiol. 2021 Jan 7;11:616213. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.616213. eCollection 2020.
Ever since the publication of the seminal paper by Lynn Margulis in 1967 proposing the theory of the endosymbiotic origin of organelles, the study of the symbiotic relationships between unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes has received ever-growing attention by microbiologists and evolutionists alike. While the evolutionary significance of the endosymbiotic associations within protists has emerged and is intensively studied, the impact of these relationships on human health has been seldom taken into account. Microbial endosymbioses involving human eukaryotic pathogens are not common, and the sexually transmitted obligate parasite and the free-living opportunistic pathogen represent two unique cases in this regard, to date. The reasons of this peculiarity for and may be due to their lifestyles, characterized by bacteria-rich environments. However, this characteristic does not fully explain the reason why no bacterial endosymbiont has yet been detected in unicellular eukaryotic human pathogens other than in and , albeit sparse and poorly investigated examples of morphological identification of bacteria-like microorganisms associated with and were reported in the past. In this review article we will present the body of experimental evidences revealing the profound effects of these examples of protist/bacteria symbiosis on the pathogenesis of the microbial species involved, and ultimately their impact on human health.
自1967年林恩·马古利斯发表开创性论文提出细胞器内共生起源理论以来，单细胞真核生物与原核生物之间共生关系的研究受到了微生物学家和进化生物学家越来越多的关注。虽然原生生物内共生关联的进化意义已显现并得到深入研究，但这些关系对人类健康的影响却很少被考虑。涉及人类真核病原体的微生物内共生并不常见，迄今为止，性传播专性寄生虫和自由生活的机会性病原体在这方面代表了两个独特的例子。对于 和 来说，这种特殊性的原因可能与其生活方式有关，其特点是富含细菌的环境。然而，这一特征并不能完全解释为什么除了 和 之外，在其他单细胞真核人类病原体中尚未检测到细菌内共生体，尽管过去曾报道过与 和 相关的类细菌微生物形态鉴定的稀少且研究不足的例子。在这篇综述文章中，我们将展示一系列实验证据，揭示这些原生生物/细菌共生例子对所涉及微生物物种发病机制的深远影响，以及最终它们对人类健康的影响。
