Abstract
African trypanosomes are naturally transmitted by bloodsucking tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa and these transmission cycles can be reproduced in the laboratory if clean tsetse flies and suitable trypanosomes are available for experiments. Tsetse transmission gives access to more trypanosome developmental stages than are available from in vitro culture, albeit in very small numbers; for example, the sexual stages of Trypanosoma brucei have been isolated from infected tsetse salivary glands, but have not yet been reported from culture. Tsetse transmission also allows for the natural transition between different developmental stages to be studied.
Both wild-type and genetically modified trypanosomes have been successfully fly transmitted, and it is possible to manipulate the trypanosome environment inside the fly to some extent, for example, the induction of expression of genes controlled by the Tet repressor by feeding flies with tetracycline.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge current support from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) for our work on tsetse–trypanosome interactions. We are ever grateful to the staff who run the tsetse colonies at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for their generous supply of tsetse pupae, and thank the many colleagues who have developed and shared the methods compiled in this chapter. We are indebted to Chris Kay and Sue Holwell for guidance and assistance on the video microscopy.
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Peacock, L., Gibson, W. (2020). Tsetse Fly Transmission Studies of African Trypanosomes. In: Michels, P., Ginger, M., Zilberstein, D. (eds) Trypanosomatids. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2116. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0294-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0294-2_4
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