DEFINING THE FUNCTION OF AN HYPHOTETICAL CALCIUM BINDING PROTEIN IDENTIFIED IN THE PATHOGEN Trypanosoma cruzi

POTENZA M; WEHRENDT D. P; FERRER M. J

Congreso; Reunión Conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencias; 2017

Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative of Chagas disease, a neglectedillness affecting ~6 million people in Latin America. Calcium andproteins that binds Ca+2 are important for parasite differentiationand infection into mammalian cells. Several channels and proteinsthat bind Ca+2 are expressed in T. cruzi, but most of them remainuncharacterized. We selected a new, hypothetical Ca+2 binding protein(TcCAL1) from T. cruzi proteome to study its role in the parasitephysiology. TcCAL1 is a 103 amino acid protein containing two EFhandmotifs and it is expressed in all life cycle forms of T. cruzi. Todefine its function, a yeast two-hybrid assay, using a cDNA libraryfrom T. cruzi has been employed to analyze the association of Tc-CAL1 with other proteins. We identified two proteins that interactwith TcCAL1. One was a protein containing an Armadillo-like domain.The Arm domains are present in several proteins and some ofthem depends their function on Ca+2 levels or small Ca+2 bindingproteins (like S-100 proteins). The other was a hypothetical proteinwith homology to a prefoldin-like subunit. These proteins form multimericcomplex that collaborate with chaperons. In certain complexes,the presence of Ca+2 is essential for an adequate proteinfolding. As a result, we hypothesize that TcCAL1 can modulate thefunction of these proteins in different processes. Current work concernsthe validation of TcCAL1 associations in co-immunoprecipitationassays from T. cruzi extracts. Future work involves studies ofTcCAL1 deregulation and their effect on differentiation and infection,in order to establish its role in these processes.