Efecto de drogas que modulan la Autofagia sobre la diferenciación de Trypanosoma cruzi

VANRELL MC; CASASSA AF; COLOMBO MI; ROMANO PS

Mendoza

Congreso; XXVIII Reunión conjunta de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo, secretaría de Ciencia Técnica y Post Grado Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica Facultades de ciencias Médicas y Ciencias Agrarias Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; 2010

Effect of drugs that modulate autophagy on Trypanosoma cruzi differentiation.         Vanrell MC, Cassasa AF, Romano PS.                                Lab. de Biol. Cel.y Mol. IHEM- CCT Mendoza- CONICET. FCM-UNCuyo. promano@fcm.uncu.edu.ar.   Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiologic agent of Chagas disease adopts different forms during its biology cycle.  In the vector gut, Triatoma infestans, the replicative epimastigote form (E) differentiates to infective metacyclic trypomastigotes (MT). Trypomastigotes can invade a wide range of nucleated cells passing to amastigote form (A) into the citosol of host cells. Amastigotes are the intracellular replicative form indispensable to continue the cycle. Although the mechanisms that govern these changes are little know, it has been accepted that during the E to MT differentiation, starvation is a principal stimulus. Autophagy is an intracellular process mainly activated during starvation. We have studied the effect of drugs or conditions that regulate autophagy during E to MT (or T to A) differentiation of T. cruzi. Using the E from GFP-Y strain, we observed that the treatment with the autophagy inhibitor Wortmannin reduces the percentage of MT recovered during the in vitro differentiation, indicated as a reduction in the percentage of infected cells and number of parasites/cell. In the other hand the differentiation from T to A was significantly increased when the parasites were exposed to starvation or to the autophagy inductor Rapamycin These results indicate that autophagy is a pathway that actively participates during T. cruzi differentiation process.