What can protist do to you?

Answer 1

First lets look at what a protist is:

Protist: Any eukaryote that is not a plant, animal, or a fungus. A majority of protists are unicellular, but some are multicellular or colonial.

Protists have been split into five supergroups: Excavata, Chromalveolata, Rhizaria, Archaeplastida, and Unikonta. Within most of these groups are organisms that can harm/benefit humans/other organisms.

SOME examples of what they can do:

- In the Excavata supergroup, an organism known as Trypanosoma causes the "sleeping sickness" disease.

-In the Chromalveolata group, some dinoflagelates cause "red tide" which can sometimes be toxic/harmful to fish.

- Also in the Chromalveolata group, a derivative of brown algae (algin) has been used as a toothpaste additive and has been used in some salad dressings

- Red algae (Archaeplastide group) has been used in the production of "nori" for Japanese sushi. Dulse, a type of red algae, is harvested off the shores of Grand Manan Island (Bay of Fundy, NB) and sold as a snack food or salty seasoning