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Souza-Melo N, de Lima Alcantara C, Vidal JC, Rocha GM, de Souza W. Implications of Flagellar Attachment Zone Proteins TcGP72 and TcFLA-1BP in Morphology, Proliferation, and Intracellular Dynamics in Trypanosoma cruzi. Pathogens 2023; 12:1367. [PMID: 38003831 PMCID: PMC10675206 DOI: 10.3390/pathogens12111367] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/16/2023] [Revised: 11/05/2023] [Accepted: 11/10/2023] [Indexed: 11/26/2023] Open
Abstract
The highly adaptable parasite Trypanosoma cruzi undergoes complex developmental stages to exploit host organisms effectively. Each stage involves the expression of specific proteins and precise intracellular structural organization. These morphological changes depend on key structures that control intracellular components' growth and redistribution. In trypanosomatids, the flagellar attachment zone (FAZ) connects the flagellum to the cell body and plays a pivotal role in cell expansion and structural rearrangement. While FAZ proteins are well-studied in other trypanosomatids, there is limited knowledge about specific components, organization, and function in T. cruzi. This study employed the CRISPR/Cas9 system to label endogenous genes and conduct deletions to characterize FAZ-specific proteins during epimastigote cell division and metacyclogenesis. In T. cruzi, these proteins exhibited distinct organization compared to their counterparts in T. brucei. TcGP72 is anchored to the flagellar membrane, while TcFLA-1BP is anchored to the membrane lining the cell body. We identified unique features in the organization and function of the FAZ in T. cruzi compared to other trypanosomatids. Deleting these proteins had varying effects on intracellular structures, cytokinesis, and metacyclogenesis. This study reveals specific variations that directly impact the success of cell division and differentiation of this parasite.
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Affiliation(s)
- Normanda Souza-Melo
- Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Celular Hertha Meyer, Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina de Precisão, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21491-590, Brazil; (C.d.L.A.); (J.C.V.); (G.M.R.)
| | - Carolina de Lima Alcantara
- Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Celular Hertha Meyer, Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina de Precisão, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21491-590, Brazil; (C.d.L.A.); (J.C.V.); (G.M.R.)
| | - Juliana Cunha Vidal
- Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Celular Hertha Meyer, Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina de Precisão, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21491-590, Brazil; (C.d.L.A.); (J.C.V.); (G.M.R.)
| | - Gustavo Miranda Rocha
- Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Celular Hertha Meyer, Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina de Precisão, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21491-590, Brazil; (C.d.L.A.); (J.C.V.); (G.M.R.)
| | - Wanderley de Souza
- Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Celular Hertha Meyer, Centro de Pesquisas em Medicina de Precisão, Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21491-590, Brazil; (C.d.L.A.); (J.C.V.); (G.M.R.)
- Centro de Estudos Biomédicos-CMABio, Escola Superior de Saúde, Universidade do Estado do Amazonas-UEA, Manaus 69065-000, Brazil
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Alves AA, Bastin P. The hows and whys of amastigote flagellum motility in Trypanosoma cruzi. mBio 2023; 14:e0053123. [PMID: 37278521 PMCID: PMC10470501 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.00531-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2023] [Accepted: 04/12/2023] [Indexed: 06/07/2023] Open
Abstract
The protist Trypanosoma cruzi exhibits several extracellular stages characterized by the presence of a long and motile flagellum and one intracellular life cycle stage termed amastigote, which possesses a tiny flagellum barely exiting the flagellar pocket. This stage was so far described as replicative but immotile cells. Unexpectedly, the recent work of M. M. Won, T. Krüger, M. Engstler, and B. A. Burleigh (mBio 14:e03556-22, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.03556-22) revealed that this short flagellum actually displays beating activity. This commentary explores how such a short flagellum could be constructed and why it could affect the parasite's survival inside the mammalian host.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aline Araujo Alves
- Trypanosome Cell Biology Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université de Paris Cité, INSERM U1201, Paris, France
| | - Philippe Bastin
- Trypanosome Cell Biology Unit, Institut Pasteur, Université de Paris Cité, INSERM U1201, Paris, France
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Saenz-Garcia JL, Borges BS, Souza-Melo N, Machado LV, Miranda JS, Pacheco-Lugo LA, Moretti NS, Wheleer R, Soares Medeiros LC, DaRocha WD. Trypanin Disruption Affects the Motility and Infectivity of the Protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. Front Cell Infect Microbiol 2022; 11:807236. [PMID: 35071054 PMCID: PMC8777028 DOI: 10.3389/fcimb.2021.807236] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2021] [Accepted: 12/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The flagellum of Trypanosomatids is an organelle that contributes to multiple functions, including motility, cell division, and host–pathogen interaction. Trypanin was first described in Trypanosoma brucei and is part of the dynein regulatory complex. TbTrypanin knockdown parasites showed motility defects in procyclic forms; however, silencing in bloodstream forms was lethal. Since TbTrypanin mutants show drastic phenotypic changes in mammalian stages, we decided to evaluate if the Trypanosoma cruzi ortholog plays a similar role by using the CRISPR-Cas9 system to generate null mutants. A ribonucleoprotein complex of SaCas9 and sgRNA plus donor oligonucleotide were used to edit both alleles of TcTrypanin without any selectable marker. TcTrypanin −/− epimastigotes showed a lower growth rate, partially detached flagella, normal numbers of nuclei and kinetoplasts, and motility defects such as reduced displacement and speed and increased tumbling propensity. The epimastigote mutant also showed decreased efficiency of in-vitro metacyclogenesis. Mutant parasites were able to complete the entire life cycle in vitro; however, they showed a reduction in their infection capacity compared with WT and addback cultures. Our data show that T. cruzi life cycle stages have differing sensitivities to TcTrypanin deletion. In conclusion, additional work is needed to dissect the motility components of T. cruzi and to identify essential molecules for mammalian stages.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jose L Saenz-Garcia
- Laboratório de Genômica Funcional de Parasitos (GFP), Universidade Federal de Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
| | - Beatriz S Borges
- Laboratório de Biologia Celular, Instituto Carlos Chagas, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), Curitiba, Brazil
| | - Normanda Souza-Melo
- Laboratório de Biologia Molecular de Patógenos (LBMP), Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.,Laboratório de Ultraestrutura Hertha Mayer, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Luiz V Machado
- Laboratório de Genômica Funcional de Parasitos (GFP), Universidade Federal de Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
| | - Juliana S Miranda
- Laboratório de Genômica Funcional de Parasitos (GFP), Universidade Federal de Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
| | | | - Nilmar S Moretti
- Laboratório de Biologia Molecular de Patógenos (LBMP), Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Richard Wheleer
- Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Lia C Soares Medeiros
- Laboratório de Biologia Celular, Instituto Carlos Chagas, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), Curitiba, Brazil
| | - Wanderson D DaRocha
- Laboratório de Genômica Funcional de Parasitos (GFP), Universidade Federal de Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
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Motility patterns of Trypanosoma cruzi trypomastigotes correlate with the efficiency of parasite invasion in vitro. Sci Rep 2020; 10:15894. [PMID: 32985548 PMCID: PMC7522242 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-72604-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2020] [Accepted: 08/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
Numerous works have demonstrated that trypanosomatid motility is relevant for parasite replication and sensitivity. Nonetheless, although some findings indirectly suggest that motility also plays an important role during infection, this has not been extensively investigated. This work is aimed at partially filling this void for the case of Trypanosoma cruzi. After recording swimming T. cruzi trypomastigotes (CL Brener strain) and recovering their individual trajectories, we statistically analyzed parasite motility patterns. We did this with parasites that swim alone or above monolayer cultures of different cell lines. Our results indicate that T. cruzi trypomastigotes change their motility patterns when they are in the presence of mammalian cells, in a cell-line dependent manner. We further performed infection experiments in which each of the mammalian cell cultures were incubated for 2 h together with trypomastigotes, and measured the corresponding invasion efficiency. Not only this parameter varied from cell line to cell line, but it resulted to be positively correlated with the corresponding intensity of the motility pattern changes. Together, these results suggest that T. cruzi trypomastigotes are capable of sensing the presence of mammalian cells and of changing their motility patterns accordingly, and that this might increase their invasion efficiency.
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Walker BJ, Wheeler RJ. High-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy for three-dimensional visualisation of beating flagella. J Cell Sci 2019; 132:jcs231795. [PMID: 31371486 PMCID: PMC6737910 DOI: 10.1242/jcs.231795] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2019] [Accepted: 07/22/2019] [Indexed: 01/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Analysis of flagellum and cilium beating in three dimensions (3D) is important for understanding cell motility, and using fluorescence microscopy to do so would be extremely powerful. Here, high-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy, where the light path is split to visualise multiple focal planes simultaneously, was used to reconstruct Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania mexicana movement in 3D. These species are uniflagellate unicellular parasites for which motility is vital. It was possible to use either a fluorescent stain or a genetically-encoded fluorescent protein to visualise flagellum and cell movement at 200 Hz frame rates. This addressed two open questions regarding Trypanosoma and Leishmania flagellum beating, which contributes to their swimming behaviours: 1) how planar is the L. mexicana flagellum beat, and 2) what is the nature of flagellum beating during T. brucei 'tumbling'? We showed that L. mexicana has notable deviations from a planar flagellum beat, and that during tumbling the T. brucei flagellum bends the cell and beats only in the distal portion to achieve cell reorientation. This demonstrates high-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy as a powerful tool for the analysis of beating flagella.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin J Walker
- Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, UK
| | - Richard J Wheeler
- Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3SY, UK
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Alves LGA, Scariot DB, Guimarães RR, Nakamura CV, Mendes RS, Ribeiro HV. Transient Superdiffusion and Long-Range Correlations in the Motility Patterns of Trypanosomatid Flagellate Protozoa. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0152092. [PMID: 27007779 PMCID: PMC4805249 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0152092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2016] [Accepted: 03/08/2016] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
We report on a diffusive analysis of the motion of flagellate protozoa species. These parasites are the etiological agents of neglected tropical diseases: leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania amazonensis and Leishmania braziliensis, African sleeping sickness caused by Trypanosoma brucei, and Chagas disease caused by Trypanosoma cruzi. By tracking the positions of these parasites and evaluating the variance related to the radial positions, we find that their motions are characterized by a short-time transient superdiffusive behavior. Also, the probability distributions of the radial positions are self-similar and can be approximated by a stretched Gaussian distribution. We further investigate the probability distributions of the radial velocities of individual trajectories. Among several candidates, we find that the generalized gamma distribution shows a good agreement with these distributions. The velocity time series have long-range correlations, displaying a strong persistent behavior (Hurst exponents close to one). The prevalence of “universal” patterns across all analyzed species indicates that similar mechanisms may be ruling the motion of these parasites, despite their differences in morphological traits. In addition, further analysis of these patterns could become a useful tool for investigating the activity of new candidate drugs against these and others neglected tropical diseases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luiz G. A. Alves
- Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
- Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, United States of America
- National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, CNPq, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22290-180, Brazil
- * E-mail:
| | - Débora B. Scariot
- Departamento de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
| | - Renato R. Guimarães
- Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
- National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, CNPq, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22290-180, Brazil
| | - Celso V. Nakamura
- Departamento de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
| | - Renio S. Mendes
- Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
- National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, CNPq, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22290-180, Brazil
| | - Haroldo V. Ribeiro
- Departamento de Física, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil
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Sosa-Hernández E, Ballesteros-Rodea G, Arias-del-Angel JA, Dévora-Canales D, Manning-Cela RG, Santana-Solano J, Santillán M. Experimental and Mathematical-Modeling Characterization of Trypanosoma cruzi Epimastigote Motility. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0142478. [PMID: 26544863 PMCID: PMC4636178 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142478] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/02/2014] [Accepted: 10/22/2015] [Indexed: 12/28/2022] Open
Abstract
The present work is aimed at characterizing the motility of parasite T. cruzi in its epimastigote form. To that end, we recorded the trajectories of two strains of this parasite (a wild-type strain and a stable transfected strain, which contains an ectopic copy of LYT1 gene and whose motility is known to be affected). We further extracted parasite trajectories from the recorded videos, and statistically analysed the following trajectory-step features: step length, angular change of direction, longitudinal and transverse displacements with respect to the previous step, and mean square displacement. Based on the resulting observations, we developed a mathematical model to simulate parasite trajectories. The fact that the model predictions closely match most of the experimentally observed parasite-trajectory characteristics, allows us to conclude that the model is an accurate description of T. cruzi motility.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eduardo Sosa-Hernández
- Unidad Monterrey, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Apodaca NL, México
| | | | | | - Diego Dévora-Canales
- Unidad Monterrey, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Apodaca NL, México
| | - Rebeca G. Manning-Cela
- Depto. de Biomedicina Molecular, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, México DF, México
| | - Jesús Santana-Solano
- Unidad Monterrey, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Apodaca NL, México
| | - Moisés Santillán
- Unidad Monterrey, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Apodaca NL, México
- * E-mail:
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