Abstract
During its life cycle, Trypanosoma cruzi undergoes physiological modifications in order to adapt to insect vector and mammalian host conditions. Metacyclogenesis is essential, as the parasite acquires the ability to infect a variety of mammalian species, including humans, in which pathology is caused. In this work, the transcriptomes of metacyclic trypomastigotes and epimastigotes were analyzed in order to identify differentially expressed genes that may be involved in metacyclogenesis. Toward this end, in vitro induction of metacyclogenesis was performed and metacyclic trypomastigotes obtained. RNA-Seq was performed on triplicate samples of epimastigotes and metacyclic trypomastigotes. Differential gene expression analysis showed 513 genes, of which 221 were upregulated and 292 downregulated in metacyclic trypomastigotes. The analysis showed that these genes are related to biological processes relevant in metacyclogenesis. Within these processes, we found that most of the genes associated with infectivity and gene expression regulation were upregulated in metacyclic trypomastigotes, while genes involved in cell division, DNA replication, differentiation, cytoskeleton, and metabolism were mainly downregulated. The participation of some of these genes in T. cruzi metacyclogenesis is of interest, as they may be used as potential therapeutic targets in the design of new drugs for Chagas disease.
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Acknowledgements
PGH thanks the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación de Colombia-Minciencias for funding her postdoctoral fellowship. The authors thank Luisa Berná and Jose Manuel Latorre Estivalis for their assistance in bioinformatics analysis.
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This study received funding support from the FPIT (Fundación para la promoción de la investigación y la tecnología del Banco de la República de Colombia) and Universidad CES.
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PGH, YCA, and NCC contributed to the study conception and designed; PGH performed the experiments, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript; YCA analyzed RNA-seq and interpreted the data; VAR and NCC analyzed and interpreted the data; and all authors reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript version.
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436_2022_7766_MOESM1_ESM.jpg
Supplementary file1 Fig. S1 PCA plot of RNA-seq data. PCA plot shows the characteristics of samples according to log fold-change. Each dot indicates a sample. Black figures represent MeT and white figures represent Epi. This graph was plotted using R software (JPG 61 KB)
436_2022_7766_MOESM2_ESM.jpg
Supplementary file2 Fig. S2 Volcano plot of DEGs analysis. The plot illustrates the genes differentially expressed in MeT compared to Epi (blue dots). Genes upregulated in positive and downregulated in negative. This graph was plotted using R software (JPG 108 KB)
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García-Huertas, P., Cuesta-Astroz, Y., Araque-Ruiz, V. et al. Transcriptional changes during metacyclogenesis of a Colombian Trypanosoma cruzi strain. Parasitol Res 122, 625–634 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07766-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-022-07766-3