RESEARCH ARTICLE
Microsporidia: A Review of 150 Years of Research
C. Franzen *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 1
Last Page: 34
Publisher ID: TOPARAJ-2-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874421400802010001
Article History:
Received Date: 4/10/2007Revision Received Date: 8/11/2007
Acceptance Date: 9/11/2007
Electronic publication date: 17/1/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Microsporidiology is a field of science with a rather long history beginning in the middle of the 19th century when a microsporidian infection of the silkworm devastated the European silkworm industry. Several other microsporidia, mainly in insects and fish, were later described, but these organisms seemed to be mere curiosities for several years. However, when it became clear that microsporidia were causing economically important diseases in insects and fish and more recently, in mammals and even in humans with immunodeficiency, microsporidia have become a favourite subject for biologists studying intracellular parasitism and molecular phylogeny. This review summarizes 150 years of microsporidian research and traces the role of the microsporidia and of microsporidiology in biology and medicine.
