Coccidian parasites of fish encompass profound phylogenetic diversity and gave rise to each of the major parasitic groups in terrestrial vertebrates.

Fish are the oldest and most diverse group of vertebrates; it therefore stands to reason that fish may have been the original hosts for many types of extant vertebrate parasites. Here, we sought to determine whether coccidian parasites of fish are especially diverse. We therefore sampled such parasites from thirty-nine species of fish and tested phylogenetic hypotheses concerning their relationships, using 18S rDNA. We found compelling phylogenetic support for distinctions among at least four lineages of piscine parasites presently ascribed to the genus Goussia. Some, but not all parasites attributed to Eimeria were confirmed as such. Major taxonomic revisions are likely justified for these parasites of fish, which appear to have given rise to each of the major lineages of coccidian parasites that subsequently proliferated in terrestrial vertebrates, including those such as Toxoplasma gondii that form tissue cysts in intermediate hosts.

N-Glycosylation analysis of formalin fixed paraffin embedded samples by capillary electrophoresis.

In this study, N-linked glycans from intact, formalin treated and formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) standard glycoproteins, human serum and mouse tumor tissue samples were investigated in respect to their susceptibility for formaldehyde treatment mediated changes. FFPE samples were first deparaffinized, followed by solubilization in radioimmunoprecipitation assay buffer and treated with PNGase F for N-glycan release. The released glycans were labeled with a charged fluorophore and analyzed by capillary electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescent detection. No significant alterations were found in the N-glycome profile at any of the investigated complexation levels (i.e., glycoprotein, serum and tissue samples) of the study. These results suggest that FFPE samples can be readily used for global N-glycome analysis holding the promise to find novel carbohydrate biomarkers in prospective and retrospective studies. Exoglycosidase based carbohydrate sequencing was also applied to reveal some basic structural information about the N-linked carbohydrates of the mouse tumor tissue samples.