Bottlenecks and the maintenance of minor genotypes during the life cycle of Trypanosoma brucei.

ABSTRACT: African trypanosomes are digenetic parasites that undergo part of their developmental cycle in mammals and part in tsetse flies. We established a novel technique to monitor the population dynamics of Trypanosoma brucei throughout its life cycle while minimising the confounding factors of strain differences or variation in fitness. Clones derived from a single trypanosome were tagged with short synthetic DNA sequences in a non-transcribed region of the genome. Infections were initiated with mixtures of tagged parasites and a combination of polymerase chain reaction and deep sequencing were used to monitor the composition of populations throughout the life cycle. This revealed that a minimum of several hundred parasites survived transmission from a tsetse fly to a mouse, or vice versa, and c

SUBMITTER: Oberle M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2912391 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature