Asymemetric repertoire of major intrinsic proteins in the Trypanosomatida orde

RAMIRO LORENZO; ANA ROMINA FOX; FIORELLA CARLA TESAN; KARINA ALLEVA

CABA

Congreso; 1st Latin American Congress of Women in Bioinformatics and Data Science; 2020

The rise in genome and transcriptome sequencing revealed a great diversity of aquagliceroporins (Glp) and aquaporins (Aqp) (MIP, Major Intrinsic Protein superfamily) throughout the three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. Some of these channels are involved in the internalization of antiparasitic drugs in kinetoplastids: pentamidine for Trypanosoma brucei1 (T. brucei) and trivalent antimony for Leishmania2. Previous studies on MIPs evolution have shown that T. brucei MIPs belong to the Glp family and Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) MIPs belong to the Aqp family, whereas in the Leishmania genus both types of channels are present. However, a thorough study of the MIPs diversity in kinetoplastids (supergroup Discoba) has not yet been done. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study MIPs from the Trypanosomatida order in a phylogenetic context. Protein sequences were retrieved from Trytrypdb and NCBI databases (annotated as AQP or resulted from tblastn search). Multiple sequence alignments (MAFFT, v7) were performed so as to build phylogenetic trees (Maximum Likelihood). Synteny studies were performed for those Trytripdb retrieved sequences. Key MIP residues were also analyzed (Froger?s positions, NPAs and selectivity filter).MIP asymmetry was found to be the distinctive feature between american and african trypanosomas (not only T. brucei and T. cruzi) with the exception of T. grayi. For most of the other Trypanosomatida genuses we found both Aqp and Glp MIPs. Synteny was mostly conserved with specific exceptions in Aqps coding regions in african trypanosomes and Glps coding regions in american trypanosomes. From the key MIP residues analysis, Trypanosomatida Aqps showed a classical AQP profile but had a non classical selectivity filter. Trypanosomatida Glps showed a classical Glp and selectivity filter residue profiles. This work introduces a deeper understanding of the MIP superfamily and may help to elucidate its functional role in the Trypanosomatida order.