Authors

H Campbell-Irwin¹; J Wilkes¹; K Crouch¹; TC Hammarton¹;  ¹ University of Glasgow, UK, UK

Discussion

The kinetoplastids are diverse organisms, comprising free-living species such as Bodo saltans, monoxenous species such as Paratrypanosoma confusum and Blechomonas ayalai that infect only arthropods, and a range of dixenous species that infect animals and/or humans and are spread by arthropod vectors, including the pathogenic “TriTryps” (Trypanosoma brucei, Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma cruzi) and other pathogenic animal trypanosomes (T. congolense, T. evansi and T. equiperdum), as well as the usually non-pathogenic T. grayi, T. melophagium, T. rangeli and T. theileri species. Given their diversity and that protein kinases are key signalling molecules with significant potential as drug targets, we wanted to compare the protein kinomes of all these species to i) shed light on the evolution of the kinetoplastid protein kinome  ii) identify a core kinome for pathogenic species that might have relevance for drug discovery efforts and iii) to identify species-specific kinases that might reflect unique aspects of biology in each organism. Only the kinomes of the TriTryps had previously been annotated, some 20 years ago¹, so we used a similar approach to annotate the kinomes of the additional species, since their genomes are publicly available at TriTrypDB².