The exosome of Trypanosoma brucei

The yeast exosome is a complex of at least 10 essential 3 ' -5 ' riboexonucleases which is involved in 3 ' -processing of many RNA species. An exosome-like complex has been found or predicted to exist in other eukaryotes but not in Escherichia coli. The unicellular parasite Trypanosoma brucei diverged very early in eukaryotic evolution. We show here that T. brucei contains at least eight exosome subunit homologs, but only a subset of these associate in a complex. Accordingly, the T. brucei exosome is smaller than that of yeast. Both free and complex-associated homologs are essential for cell viability and are involved in 5.8S rRNA maturation. We suggest that the exosome was present in primitive eukaryotes, and became increasingly complex during subsequent evolution.