Asymmetric repertoire of Major Intrinsic Proteins in the Trypanosomatida order.

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

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

Women in Bioinformatics and Data Science LA

The rise in genome and transcriptome sequencing revealed a great diversity ofaquagliceroporins (Glp) and aquaporins (Aqp) (MIP, Major Intrinsic Protein superfamily)throughout the three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. Some of thesechannels are involved in the internalization of antiparasitic drugs in kinetoplastids:pentamidine for Trypanosoma brucei 1 ( T. brucei ) and trivalent antimony forLeishmania 2 . Previous studies on MIPs evolution have shown that T. brucei MIPsbelong to the Glp family and Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) MIPs belong to the Aqpfamily, whereas in the Leishmania genus both types of channels are present. However,a thorough study of the MIPs diversity in kinetoplastids (supergroup Discoba) has notyet been done. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study MIPs from theTrypanosomatida order in a phylogenetic context. Protein sequences were retrievedfrom Trytrypdb and NCBI databases (annotated as AQP or resulted from tblastnsearch). Multiple sequence alignments (MAFFT, v7) were performed so as to buildphylogenetic trees (Maximum Likelihood). Synteny studies were performed for thoseTrytripdb retrieved sequences. Key MIP residues were also analyzed (Froger’spositions, NPAs and selectivity filter).MIP asymmetry was found to be the distinctive feature between american and africantrypanosomas (not only T. brucei and T. cruzi ) with the exception of T. grayi . For mostof the other Trypanosomatida genuses we found both Aqp and Glp MIPs. Synteny wasmostly conserved with specific exceptions in Aqps coding regions in africantrypanosomes and Glps coding regions in american trypanosomes. From the key MIPresidues analysis, Trypanosomatida Aqps showed a classical AQP profile but had anon classical selectivity filter. Trypanosomatida Glps showed a classical Glp andselectivity filter residue profiles. This work introduces a deeper understanding of theMIP superfamily and may help to elucidate its functional role in the Trypanosomatidaorder. Keywords : MIP, trypanosomatida, aquaporin, synteny, phylogeny.