Authors

Discussion

Trypanosoma congolense causes significant economic burden across Sub-Saharan Africa, as it is the etiological agent of Animal African Trypanosomiasis (AAT), a wasting disease affecting cattle which currently has no pharmaceutical treatment. T. congolense is a close relative of Trypanosoma brucei, they co-infect the same hosts so have been exposed to similar evolutionary selective pressures, and it is expected they will show similarities in host interactions. While T. brucei is a well-studied model organism, very little experimental work has been performed using T. congolense as tools have only recently been developed for genetic manipulation, but now is the time to use them to investigate the survival and infection mechanisms of the parasite. One of the major symptoms of AAT is a high fever which T. congolense responds to by eliciting the heat shock (HS) response, an important virulence factor which allows the parasite to survive in the host. The aim of this project is to characterise the T. congolense HS response, as understanding the mechanisms involved could pave the way for discovering novel drug targets in this parasite.

A bioinformatic analysis looking into the conservation of proteins, phosphorylation sites and active sites involved in the HS response between T. brucei and T. congolense has been conducted. Key proteins involved in the HS response are being tagged and analysed with immunofluorescence microscopy to see if they localise in the same way in T. brucei and T. congolense during HS. Flow cytometry is being used to characterise cell cycle progression through HS. RNAi knockdown of ZC3H11 will be performed to see its effect on the cells ability to survive HS. Preliminary results of this work will be shown.