The complete set of SNARE proteins that mediate membrane fusion events in Giardia lamblia

VANINA ELÍAS; RODRIGO QUIROGA; HUGO DANIEL LUJÁN

Cordoba Argentina

Congreso; XXI Reunion Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Protozoologia; 2007

The early branching protist Giardia lamblia is a intestinal parasite that as a simple life cycle,alternating between the vgetative trophozoite and the infective cyst. In higher eukaryotic cells, the SNARE protein are the core fusion machinery for intracellular vesicle trafficking specific SNARE pairing is required for appropiate membrane fusion . To infer the funtional role of the SNARE protein in Giardia,we determined their localization through tranfection and exression of the epitope-tagged constructs in vegetative and encysting trophozoites. Our results indicate that each Giardia SNARE localizes toa particular subcellular compartment and that some of them are involved in the regulated secretory pathway occurring during cyst wall formation. By antisense knock-down expression , are also found that most SNAREs are essential for parasite viability, demonstrating the importance of the SNARE proteins in constituting a minimal machinery for vesicles fusion in eukaryotes