Bridgin, a protein related to human Ki67 protein, functionally diverged in the human pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans.     

 One may not have heard of Cryptococcus neoformans but this human pathogen causes more than 200, 000 deaths each year, most of them are AIDS patients, by causing fungal meningitis and fungal pneumonia. Kaustuv Sanyal’s laboratory reports the discovery of a new set of proteins in this nasty bug.  They named one of them as Bridgin and demonstrated that it is essential for precise chromosome segregation. Interestingly, Bridgin is related to a human tumour cell proliferation marker protein Ki67, and hence functionally diverged.