Proteomic and genomic approaches to understanding the power plant of Cryptosporidium

Cryptosporidium spp. are important parasites of humans and animals for which current therapies are extremely limited. In order to target the biology of this unusual organism, a fuller understanding of its biochemistry, including the role of its subcellular organelles, is required. Genomics has enabled us to produce predictive biochemical maps of Cryptosporidium spp. and recently proteomic confirmation of many of these pathways has been achieved with the first full-scale proteomic analysis of Cryptosporidium parvum. These proteomic data, which cover over one-third of the entire predicted proteome, have now been made publicly available via CryptoDB (http://cryptodb.org/cryptodb/). Proteomic studies confirm that the parasite appears to retain a remnant organelle that fulfills some, but not all, of the roles of a fully functioning mitochondrion. Initial attempts to describe the sub-proteome of this organelle have met with limited success, and further work is required to improve the enrichment of the mitochondria-related organelle prior to proteomic analysis.