Plant-like traits associated with metabolism of Trypanosoma parasites
- Véronique Hannaert*,
- Emma Saavedra*,†,
- Francis Duffieux*,‡,
- Jean-Pierre Szikora*,
- Daniel J. Rigden§,
- Paul A. M. Michels*, and
- Fred R. Opperdoes*,¶
- *Research Unit for Tropical Diseases and Laboratory of Biochemistry, Christian de Duve Institute of Cellular Pathology and Université Catholique de Louvain, B-1200 Brussels, Belgium; and §Embrapa Genetic Resources and Biotechnology, 70770-900 Brasilia-DF, Brazil
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Edited by P. Borst, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and approved December 6, 2002 (received for review September 23, 2002)
Abstract
Trypanosomatid parasites cause serious diseases among humans, livestock, and plants. They belong to the order of the Kinetoplastida and form, together with the Euglenida, the phylum Euglenozoa. Euglenoid algae possess plastids capable of photosynthesis, but plastids are unknown in trypanosomatids. Here we present molecular evidence that trypanosomatids possessed a plastid at some point in their evolutionary history. Extant trypanosomatid parasites, such as Trypanosoma and Leishmania, contain several “plant-like” genes encoding homologs of proteins found in either chloroplasts or the cytosol of plants and algae. The data suggest that kinetoplastids and euglenoids acquired plastids by endosymbiosis before their divergence and that the former lineage subsequently lost the organelle but retained numerous genes. Several of the proteins encoded by these genes are now, in the parasites, found inside highly specialized peroxisomes, called glycosomes, absent from all other eukaryotes, including euglenoids.
Footnotes
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↵ † Present address: Departamento de Bioquímica, Instituto Nacional de Cardiología, CP14080 México D.F., México.
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↵ ‡ Present address: Aventis Pharma, F-93235 Romainville, France.
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↵ ¶ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: opperdoes{at}trop.ucl.ac.be.
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This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
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Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ databases [accession nos. AJ315077 (T. brucei SBPase), AJ315078 (T. brucei FBPase), AF374270 (L. mexicana G6PDH), and AF374271 (L. mexicana 6PGL)].
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See commentary on page 765.
- Abbreviations:
- ACP,
- acyl carrier protein;
- 6PGL,
- 6-phosphogluconolactonase;
- FBPase,
- fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase;
- PGAM,
- phosphoglycerate mutase;
- PTS,
- peroxisome-targeting signal;
- PTS1,
- PTS at the C terminus;
- PTS2,
- PTS near the N terminus;
- SBPase,
- sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase;
- G3PDH,
- glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase
- Copyright © 2003, The National Academy of Sciences
