Post genomic analysis of putative amino acid transporters in trypanosomes

BOUVIER LA; SILBER AM; CANEPA GE; MIRANDA MR; MANSO ALVES MJ; TORRES HN; PEREIRA CA

Bariloche

Congreso; XXXIX Reunión anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2003

Trypanosoma cruzi cells use amino acids not only as a carbon source (i.e. proline), but also in different metabolic pathways. Phosphorilated arginine acts as an energy reservoir involved in the renewal of ATP. It was also established that proline, aspartate and glutamate participate in the differentiation process. However, the molecular structure of trypanosomes amino acid transporters remains unknown. Using the available data from the T. cruzi genome project, we identified and characterized in silico different putative amino acid transporter (PAT) groups, containing paralogous sequences. More than 10,000 sequences were used to iterative assembling of contigs and 50-100 PAT open reading frames (ORFs) were detected and characterized. The genome organization of these ORFs suggests that PAT genes are arrenged in tandem repeat clusters. At last, we also identified the sequence orthologous in other trypanosomatids such as Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma brucei. The amino acids transport may be considered as the first step in their metabolic pathways, wherefore the identification of transporter genes could be important for metabolic research and drug design.