Volume: 50 Issue: 1
Year: 2019, Page: 1-6,
Received: Nov. 20, 2018 Accepted: Nov. 28, 2018 Published: Jan. 1, 2019
Phylum apicomplexa form an important group of pathogens that include many parasitic organisms of medical and veterinary importance. Major members of that phylum that are responsible for debilitating diseases in humans and animals are Toxoplasma, Plasmodium, Babesia, Theileria, Eimeria and Cryptosporidium. Lack of effective vaccines and emerging resistance against available drugs demands improved and effective new strategies for prevention and treatment of the diseases caused by these pathogens. One curious and important organelle shared by these pathogens is named as apicoplast because of its similarity to plant chloroplasts. Apicoplast is indispensable for parasites belonging to phylum apicomplexa as it provides the parasites with important metabolic intermediates. The metabolic pathways hosted by the apicoplast that provides these essential metabolites are different from the corresponding pathways in the host organisms as the apicoplast has prokaryotic origins. This makes apicoplast and its metabolic pathways important and
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© 2019 Sethu C Nair. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.