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Over the last years, an expanding family of small regulatory RNAs (e.g. microRNAs, siRNAs and piRNAs) was recognized as key players in novel forms of post-transcriptional gene regulation in most eukaryotes. However, the machinery associated with Ago/Dicer-dependent small RNA biogenesis was thought to be either entirely lost or extensively simplified in some unicellular organisms including Trypanosoma cruzi, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Leishmania major and Plasmodium falciparum. Although the biogenesis of small RNAs from non-coding RNAs represent a minor fraction of the normal small RNA transcriptome in eukaryotic cells, they represent the unique small RNA pathways in Trypanosoma cruzi which produce different populations of small RNAs derived from tRNAs, rRNAs, sn/snoRNAs and mRNAs. These small RNAs are secreted included in extracellular vesicles and transferred to other parasites and …