Peroxidoxins: A new antioxidant family

Peroxidoxins are a recently described family of antioxidants. They have an ancient origin, being present in organisms as primitive as the archaea, and they appear to be ubiquitous in living cells. Here, Sharon McGonigle, John Dalton and Eric James review the present understanding of the functions and mechanism of action of these enzymes and suggest that these antioxidants may represent the 'missing link' in the metabolism of reactive oxygen species by some protozoan and helminth parasites. Also, by performing sequence comparisons of homologues entered in the public databases, they have classified the parasite peroxidoxins as 1-cys or 2-cys enzymes. The discovery of these antioxidants may change our understanding of how reactive oxygen species, of parasite or host origin, are managed by parasites.