Cell Death after Photodynamic Therapy Treatment in Unicellular Protozoan Parasite Tritrichomonas foetus

Abstract

Programmed cell death in T. foetus does not seem to make sense at first sight; however, different mechanisms of cellular death in this unicellular organism have been observed. This review summarizes the available data related to programmed cell death already published for the cattle parasite T. foetus and attempts to clarify some crucial points to understand this mechanism found in non-mitochondriates parasites, as well as assist in future research. Important results with different treatments showed that the T. foetus can choose among different pathways how to initiate cell death. Thus, a major challenge for cellular death research remains the identification of the molecular cell death machinery of this protist, such as caspases pathway, nuclear abnormalities, morphology cell changes, cellular death in this parasite and the prospects in the future research. Although, the possibility of the existence of different pathways to cell death in trichomonads is discussed and a model for possible executioners pathways during T. foetus cell death is proposed.