Giardia intestinalis is a binucleated diplomonad possessing four pairs of flagella of distinct location and function. Its pathogenic potential depends on the integrity of a complex microtubular cytoskeleton that undergoes a profound but poorly understood reorganization during cell division. We examined the cell division of G. intestinalis with the aid of light and electron microscopy and immunofluorescence methods and present here new observations on the reorganization of the flagellar apparatus in the dividing Giardia. Our results demonstrated the presence of a flagellar maturation process during which the flagella migrate, assume different position, and transform to different flagellar types in progeny until their maturation is completed. For each newly assembled flagellum it takes three cell cycles to become mature. The mature flagellum of Giardia is the caudal one that possesses a privileged basal body at which the microtubules of the adhesive disk nucleate. In contrast to generally accepted assumption that each of the two diplomonad mastigonts develops separately, we found that they are developmentally linked, exchanging their cytoskeletal components at the early phase of mitosis. The presence of the flagellar maturation process in a metamonad protist Giardia suggests that the basal body or centriole maturation is a universal phenomenon that may represent one of the core processes in a eukaryotic cell.

Department of Tropical Medicine 1st Faculty of Medicine Charles University Prague Studnickova 7 128 00 Prague 2 Czech Republic

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The Giardia ventrolateral flange is a lamellar membrane protrusion that supports attachment

Inheritance of the reduced mitochondria of Giardia intestinalis is coupled to the flagellar maturation cycle

Giardia intestinalis mitosomes undergo synchronized fission but not fusion and are constitutively associated with the endoplasmic reticulum

Cytogenetic evidence for diversity of two nuclei within a single diplomonad cell of Giardia