Taxonomic group: protista / Discosea
(Phylum: Discosea)
Host organism: (mammal)
Organ / tissue: cyst wallAssociated disease: infection due to Acanthamoeba [ICD11:
XN0HM 
];
acanthamoebiasis [ICD11:
1F50 ]
NCBI PubMed ID: 25586209Publication DOI: 10.1186/s13071-015-0642-7Journal NLM ID: 101462774Publisher: London: BioMed Central
Correspondence: naveed5438
gmail.com
Institutions: Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Aga Khan University, Stadium Road, Karachi, Pakistan
Acanthamoeba is an opportunistic free-living amoeba that can cause blinding keratitis and fatal brain infection. Early diagnosis, followed by aggressive treatment is a pre-requisite in the successful treatment but even then the prognosis remains poor. A major drawback during the course of treatment is the ability of the amoeba to enclose itself within a shell (a process known as encystment), making it resistant to chemotherapeutic agents. As the cyst wall is partly made of cellulose, thus cellulose degradation offers a potential therapeutic strategy in the effective targeting of trophozoite encased within the cyst walls. Here, we present a comprehensive report on the structure of cellulose and cellulases, as well as known cellulose degradation mechanisms with an eye to target the Acanthamoeba cyst wall. The disruption of the cyst wall will make amoeba (concealed within) susceptible to chemotherapeutic agents, and at the very least inhibition of the excystment process will impede infection recurrence, as we bring these promising drug targets into focus so that they can be explored to their fullest.
cellulose, Cyst wall, Acanthamoeba, Cyst formation
Structure type: homopolymer ; n=100-14000
Location inside paper: Fig. 1
Trivial name: cellulose
Contained glycoepitopes: IEDB_142488,IEDB_146664,IEDB_983931,SB_192
Comments, role: review
NCBI Taxonomy refs (TaxIDs): 5754
Show glycosyltransferases
There is only one chemically distinct structure:
Found 
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