Mitochondrial Gene Expression Is Responsive to Starvation Stress and Developmental Transition in Trypanosoma cruzi.

ABSTRACT: Trypanosoma cruzi parasites causing Chagas disease are passed between mammals by the triatomine bug vector. Within the insect, T. cruzi epimastigote-stage cells replicate and progress through the increasingly nutrient-restricted digestive tract, differentiating into infectious, nonreplicative metacyclic trypomastigotes. Thus, we evaluated how nutrient perturbations or metacyclogenesis affects mitochondrial gene expression in different insect life cycle stages. We compared mitochondrial RNA abundances in cultures containing fed, replicating epimastigotes, differentiating cultures containing both starved epimastigotes and metacyclic trypomastigotes and epimastigote starvation cultures. We observed increases in mitochondrial rRNAs and some mRNAs in differentiating cultures. These increases pr

SUBMITTER: Shaw AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4894683 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar-Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature