Free Living Amoeba Essay

Free-living amoeba (FLA) in the amoebozoa group encompasses the largest group of protists, and have been known important in ecologically and medically. They can cause a serious disease to humans and animals if delayed of treatment. Amoeba was first discovered using microscope by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof in 1757 (Joseph, 1878). The origins of the name “Amoeba” is derived from the Greek word referring to their common amoeboid motion, i.e. crawling-like movement. They also have been described into several different groups. Amoeboid are ubiquitous organisms and found worldwide. They are widespread in many types of habitat, playing a major role in microbial predators and were considered harmless in soil (Rodriguez-Zaragoza, 1994). FLA that lived in aquatic ecosystems equipped with flagellates (Ekelund and Ronn, 1994). There are several species of amoeba that lives in the marine ecosystem as consumers and producers but some are known to harbour with symbiotic algae (Gast et al., 2009). FLA is a single living cell with the organelles and cytoplasm are enclosed by a cell membrane with

In a recent study, Protozoa have been divided into six Supergroup and Amoeba in Amoebazoa (Adl et al., 2005). The history of taxonomy amoeba has been many changes and continuously study until this day when the scientists discover new data through genomic sequencing (De Jonckheere, 2004; Nassonova et al., 2010; Smirnov et al., 2007). There is difficulty in taxonomic classification amoeba, because amoeba is under polyphyletic group that having arisen from different branches of the original evolutionary tree (Schuster and Visvesvara, 2004). Study of other researchers also found that it appears (based in proteomos) that the amoebozoa form a sister group to animals and fungi, diverging from this lineage after it had split from the other groups (Eichinger,