Genome Plasticity in Cultured Leishmania donovani: Comparison of Early and Late Passages.

ABSTRACT: Leishmania donovani possesses a complex heteroxenic life cycle where infective metacyclic promastigotes are pre-adapted to infect their host and cope up with intracellular stress. Exploiting the similarities between cultured and sandfly derived promastigotes, we used early and late passage cultured promastigotes to show specific changes at genome level which compromise pathogen fitness reflected in gene expression and infection studies. The pathogen loses virulence mostly via transcriptional and translational regulations and long-time cultivation makes them struggle to convert to virulent metacyclics. At the genomic level very subtle plasticity was observed between the early and the late passages mostly in defense-related, nutrient acquisition and signal transduction genes. C

SUBMITTER: Sinha R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6037818 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature