Research on the properties of Giardia heme proteins at Trent University
While the parasitic protist Giardia is unusual for many reasons, we focus on one unusual property: despite lacking the ability to make the iron-containing cofactor heme, Giardia still has a handful of heme proteins. However, the number of such proteins is unusually low compared to other organisms, and consists of one flavohemoglobin, and four members of the cytochrome b5 family of electron carriers. These are the proteins we study.