The genome of the diplomonad Hexamita inflata reveals adaptations to a free-living lifestyle
Hexamita inflata is a unicellular eukaryotic organism that belongs to the diplomonad group and has a unique genome structure. Despite being a eukaryote, the number of introns in its genome is limited to about a dozen. It follows codon table 6, which differs from the standard codon table in that TAA and TAG code for the amino acid glutamine instead of serving as stop codons. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that free-living Hexamita inflata is nested within parasitic diplomonads. The genome size of Hexamita inflata is significantly larger (142.6 Mbp) than that of parasitic diplomonads in the same group, primarily due to repetitive structures consisting of transposable elements and clear expansions of some superfamilies.