The genomes of all organisms are read throughout their growth and development, generating new copies during cell division and encoding the cellular activities dictated by the genome’s content. However, genomes are not invariant information stores but are purposefully altered in minor and major ways, adapting cellular behaviour and driving evolution. Kinetoplastids are eukaryotic microbes that display a wide range of such read–write genome activities, in many cases affecting critical aspects of their biology, such as host adaptation. Here we discuss the range of read–write genome changes found in two well-studied kinetoplastid parasites, Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania, focusing on recent work that suggests such adaptive genome variation is linked to novel strategies the parasites use to replicate their unconventional genomes.

所有生物的基因组在其生长和发育过程中都会被读取，在细胞分裂过程中产生新的拷贝，并编码由基因组内容决定的细胞活动。然而，基因组不是不变的信息存储，而是有目的地以次要和主要方式进行改变，以适应细胞行为并推动进化。动质体是真核微生物，表现出广泛的此类读写基因组活动，在许多情况下会影响其生物学的关键方面，例如宿主适应。在这里，我们讨论了在两种经过充分研究的动质体寄生虫，布氏锥虫和利什曼原虫中发现的读写基因组变化范围，重点关注最近的工作，这些工作表明这种适应性基因组变异与寄生虫用来复制其非常规基因组的新策略有关。