Blastocystis Highlights 2012

2012 is coming to an end and it is also time for taking stock of the year Blastocystis-wise. We saw many significant scientific papers, among them a paper by Poirier and colleagues, predicting a potential role for Blastocystis in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), based on analysis of their recent genome data.They propose that Blastocystis is genetically armed with the equipment necessary to cause intestinal dysbiosis, and potentially IBS, which may be a cause of dysbiosis. Indeed, members of this group found that the Blastocystis genome encodes various proteases and hydrolases that, if secreted, may be involved with perturbations of the gut flora; however, we need transcriptional profiling or similar studies to find out, whether these enzymes are actually expressed. Some species of Entamoeba are also in possession of multiple "virulence genes", but for some species they apparently remain un-expressed, and most Entamoeba species are still considered harmless.