About EIN

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The Euglenoids were first identified by Antony van Leeuwenhoek in 16741. Since its identification, efforts have been underway to understand it’s biology and translational applications using genomic and non-genomic approaches. In the 1960s and 1980s and 1990s early works in Euglena were sufficiently documented2,3. Over the last two decades there have been a growing list of communities within the Euglena science aiming to uncover several aspects of the biology of Euglena as well as its biotechnological applications4-12. As the Euglena global community continues to grow, so is the need to bring the Euglena community together to better understand Euglena biology and harness it’s biotechnological potential. 

The Euglena International Network (EIN) aims to galvanise the Euglena global community and provide a collaborative interface. EIN’s approach will be via the following stages: Assemble, identify, engage, implement, and update advances in Euglena science. EIN is currently aiming for a one-day inauguration event, which is the first phase; this event will help to assemble, identify, and engage with the Euglena global scientific community. The second phase, which will consist of the implementation and update stages, are expected to be fall-outs from the inauguration event. Therefore, the aims and objectives of EIN are to:

  • Assemble, for the first time, international investigators working on Euglena. Create a collaborative platform for researchers, academics, and industry professionals working on Euglena globally, and introduce EIN to the international scientific community.
  • Identify and form a committee who will be tasked with providing Consortium partnership models and deliverables. Drive the formation of the Euglena Genome Consortium (EGC) to sequence select Euglenoid species in collaboration with other projects such as the Earth BioGenome Project, Wellcome Sanger Tree of Life Project, UK Darwin Tree of Life, etc. Facilitate a ranked list of species, designate sequencing priorities, and ensure provision of complete reference Euglena sequenced genomes. 
  • Engage the conversation for knowledge exchange between industry professionals (food, environment, energy and health) and academics working on Euglena globally. Identify and form committees who will be tasked with providing knowledge exchange and industry partnership models and scientific deliverables. This will lead us to the Implementation stage.
  • Engage the conversation for annual or biennial Euglena conferences. Identify and form committees who will be tasked with organising the Euglena Conference. This will lead us to the Update stage.
  • Implement recommendations and outcomes from the EIN inauguration event; one of which will be the formation of EGC (please see above).
  • Update Euglena scientific community on advances in Euglena science through the organisation and hosting of conferences and knowledge exchange programmes with the industry (please see above).
  1. Dobell, C., 1932. Antony van Leeuwenhoek and his “Little Animals”: being some Account of the Father of Protozoology and Bacteriology and his Multifarious Discoveries in these Disciplines. Brace and company, 512 pp.
  2. Buetow, D.E., 1968. The biology of Euglena. Academic Press, 364 pp.
  3. Triemer, R.E., Farmer, M.A., 1991. An ultrastructural comparison of the mitotic apparatus, feeding apparatus, flagellar apparatus and cytoskeleton in euglenoids and kinetoplastids. Protoplasma 164, 91-104.
  4. Linton, E.W., Karnkowska-Ishikawa, A., Kim, J.I., Shin, W. , Ben-nett, M.S., Kwiatowski, J., Zakrys, B., Triemer, R.E., 2010. Reconstructing Euglenoid evolutionary relationships using threegenes: nuclear SSU and LSU, and chloroplast SSU rDNAsequences and the description of Euglenaria gen. nov (Eugleno-phyta). Protist 1614, 603-619.
  5. Dobáková, E., Flegontov, P., Skalický, T., Lukeš, J., 2015. Unexpectedly streamlined mitochondrial genome of the euglenozoan Euglena gracilis. Genome Biology and Evolution 7(12), 3358–3367.
  6. O’Neill, E.C., Trick, M., Henrissat, B., Field, R.A., 2015. Euglena in time: Evolution, control of central metabolic processes and multi-domain proteins in carbohydrate and natural product biochemistry. Perspectives in Science 6, 84-93.
  7. Yoshida, Y., Tomiyama, T., Maruta, T., Tomita, M., Ishikawa, T., Arakawa, K., 2016. De novo assembly and comparative transcriptome analysis of Euglena gracilis in response to anaerobic conditions. BMC Genomics 17, 182.
  8. Schwartzbach, S., Shigeoka, S., 2017. Euglena: Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology. Springer International Publishing, 303 pp.
  9. Ebenezer, T.E., Zoltner, M., Burrell, A. et al., 2019. Transcriptome, proteome and draft genome of Euglena gracilis. BMC Biology 17, 11.
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