Anastaios Tsaousis

My name is Anastasios (Tasos) Tsaousis and I grew up in Nicosia (Cyprus).  I am a molecular cell biologist/parasitologist with a great interest on the evolution and function of mitochondrion-related organelles, their metabolic direct and indirect “connections” with their hosts, the evolution of parasitic protozoa and the origin and evolution of the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA).

Below is a small introduction about me:

Pre-doctoral research:

During the four years of my undergraduate degree at the School of Biology, University of Crete, I tried to gain as much technical experience to complement my academic knowledge. Some of the molecular techniques I learned were part of the practical sessions carried out at the University of Crete. Despite my intensive academic schedule, I was involved in a number of activities at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (CING). There, I participated in the molecular study of BRCA1/2 genes in high-risk breast cancer families of the Cypriot population and gained valuable experience in various molecular biology techniques. In the first semester of my final year at the University of Crete, I accepted a placement at CING, working on my own research project titled “Correlation Between p53 Immunostaining Patterns and Gene Sequence Mutations in Breast Carcinoma”. The outcome of this was the discovery of several missense mutations and polymorphisms, with the results I presented in an Anticancer Congress.

My final year project, titled “Mosaic mitochondrial molecules in Mytilus galloprovincialis males”, was carried out at the laboratory of “Population Genetics and Evolution” (University of Crete) under the supervision of Prof. Eleftherios Zouros. The project involved the investigation of four regions of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and resulted in the identification of possible mtDNA recombination. After my undergraduate studies, I was employed as a research technician at CING where I was involved in different projects in the field of human genetics. In parallel, I was also working on a project in collaboration with the laboratory of Prof. Zouros in an attempt to discover whether recombination occurs in mtDNA from animal sequences already published. The findings from this collaboration resulted in a first authorship publication [Publication].

PHD research:

During my PhD, I sought to understand the purpose, diversity and evolution of protists. For this reason, I joined the Microbial Eukaryotes‘ group of Prof. T. Martin Embley and Dr. Robert Hirt at the Newcastle University, UK. There, I initially focused my research on the cell biology and biochemistry of reduced parasitic forms and their organelles.  I was studying microsporidia: obligate intracellular parasites of various eukaryotes and increasingly important pathogens of immunosupressed humans. My studies presented the first experimental evidence for the existence of a remnant mitochondrion (a mitosome) in Encephalitozoon cuniculi. It also included the first experimental evidence for the localization and function of a non-mitochondrial ATP/ADP transporter in its mitosome, the presence of which potentially solves the conundrum of how the mitosome acquires its ATP. This was the first demonstration of a mitochondrion-related organelle (MRO) using this type of protein to scavenge ATP from the host cell cytosol. A second set of data demonstrated a functional role of the microsporidian mitosome in an essential eukaryotic pathway – iron/sulphur (Fe/S) cluster biosynthesis, believed to be the raison d’être of the mitosome.  The results of my thesis add a fundamental piece to the puzzle of the mitochondrial diversity and the biochemical reduction of parasitic protists and have been published in high impact journals [Publications 1,2].

Post-doctoral research:

From January 2008, I am working at Andrew Roger’s lab (Dalhousie University), where my research focuses on the function and evolution of the anaerobic mitochondrial organelle of the human intestinal parasite Blastocystis and other parasites.  Using the list of potential mitochondrial proteins from the ESTs sequenced from Blastocystis, I am investigating the localization and the function of some of the main mitochondrial pathways in order to understand the adaptation of this mitochondrion in the anaerobic lifestyle but also understand the role its in the evolution of mitochondria. Some experiments/published work will discuss below:

I have worked on the localization and functional characterization (using complementation studies in yeast knock-downs) of the Translocase of Outer Membrane 70 (Tom70) of Blastocystis and other chromalveolates. Tom70 is a component of the mitochondrial protein import machinery that is essential for the import of pre-proteins with internal targeting sequences into mitochondria and which was thought to be present only in animal and fungal lineages [Publication].