Scientific Substantiation of Population Monitoring of Free-Living Protozoan Community in Natural Biotopes. Communication 1: A Review

Introduction: The relevance of the methodological development of the subsystem of sanitary and environmental protistology in conditions of high anthropogenic pressure on the environment is associated with the need to monitor safety of cenotic changes in natural ecosystems in order to assess their impact on public health.
Objective: To analyze up-to-date areas of modern scientific research of unicellular organisms of the natural environment and human biota.
Materials and methods: The article presents a literature review of scientific research findings published in 1990–2022 and found on PubMed, Google Scholar, eLibrary, CyberLeninka, Scopus, and disserCat information portals and platforms. The scientific topic was searched for using the following keywords: protists, environmental protistology, medical protistology, genetic and morphological diversity of unicellular organisms, role of protozoa in nature, and exemplary models. The initial selection consisted of more than 60 publications; 40 of the 45 initially identified articles were selected for analysis. Description of the infrastructural components of the biota of the natural and internal organizational environment was the inclusion criterion while that of the mechanisms of interaction and changes in biomedical processes was the exclusion one.
Results: The patterns of change in the structural community of aquatic and terrestrial amoebae in Russia have been poorly studied. Modern ideas about the role of free-living amoebae in natural and organismal biota allow their use in exemplary models for studying various biological processes. Given the type and humidity of the environment, the community of free-living amoebas is closely attached to the micro-conditions of their habitat. The morphological and genetic diversity of new amoeba taxa continues to expand and makes a significant contribution to the development of scientific and applied research on their impact on microbial communities and maintenance of ecosystem and organismal balance.
Conclusion: The necessity of active application of free-living protozoa models in Russian research projects is substantiated, taking into account the increasing interest of foreign scientists in their use in various fields of research, including in the creation of artificial cells.

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