Transcription is the first step of gene expression regulation and is a fundamental mechanism for establishing the viability and development of a cell. The TATA box-binding protein (TBP) interaction with a TATA box in a promoter is one of the best studied mechanisms in transcription initiation. TBP is a transcription factor that is highly conserved from archaea to humans and is essential for the transcription initiated by each of the three RNA polymerases. In addition, the discovery of TBP-related factor 1 (TRF1) and other factors related to TBP shed light on the variability among transcription initiation complexes, thus demonstrating that the compositions of these complexes are, in fact, more complicated than originally believed. Despite these facts, the majority of studies on transcription have been performed on animal, plant and fungal cells, which serve as canonical models, and information regarding protist cells is relatively scarce. The aim of this work is to review the diversity of the TBPs that have been documented in protists and describe some of the specific features that differentiate them from their counterparts in higher eukaryotes.

转录是基因表达调控的第一步，是建立细胞活力和发育的基本机制。TATA盒结合蛋白（TBP）与启动子中的TATA盒的相互作用是转录起始中研究得最好的机制之一。TBP是从古细菌到人类高度保守的转录因子，并且对于由三种RNA聚合酶中的每一种起始的转录都是必不可少的。此外，TBP相关因子1（TRF1）和其他与TBP相关的因子的发现揭示了转录起始复合物之间的变异性，因此证明了这些复合物的组成实际上比最初认为的更为复杂。尽管有这些事实，但大多数有关转录的研究都是在动物，植物和真菌细胞上进行的，作为经典模型，关于原生生物细胞的信息相对稀缺。这项工作的目的是回顾已在生物学家中记录的TBP的多样性，并描述一些使其与高级真核生物中的TBP有所区别的特定特征。