INVESTIGADORES
CARRILLO carolina
artículos
Título:
The regulation of autophagy differentially affects Trypanosoma cruzi metacyclogenesis
Autor/es:
VANRELL MC; LOSINNO AD; CUETO JA; BALCAZAR DE; FRACCAROLI L; CARRILLO C; ROMANO PS
Revista:
PLOS NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES
Editorial:
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Referencias:
Lugar: San Francisco; Año: 2017 p. 1 - 23
ISSN:
1935-2735
Resumen:
Autophagy is the cellular process mainly employed to capture own macromolecules and whole compartments to break down in basic compounds bylisosomal degradation. All types of eukaryotic cells from yeasts to mammalian cells have the machinery to activate autophagy as a result of many physiological and pathological situations. The most characteristic stimulus of autophagy is starvation and the result, in this case, is the fast generation of utilizable food (e.g. amino acids and basic nutrients) to maintain the vital biological process. In some organisms, starvation stimulus also displays other associated processes as differentiation. The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi undergoes different differentiation processes throughout its complex life cycle. Activation of autophagy in the parasite is supposed to favor the quick turnover between compartments required for parasite adaptation to the new host. Although T. cruzi has not all autophagic genes, previous works have demonstrated the presence of essential autophagic related proteins. TcAtg8, the parasite homolog of Atg8/LC3 in other organisms, is located in autophagosome-like vesicles under starvation conditions.In this work, we have characterized the autophagic pathway during T. cruzidifferentiation from epimastigotes to metacyclic trypomastigotes, a process called metacyclogenesis. We demonstrate that autophagy is stimulated duringmetacyclogenesis and that induction of autophagy promotes this process.Moreover, with exeption of bafilomycin, other classical autophagy modulators have similar effect on T. cruzi autophagy. We also show that spermidine and related polyamines can positively regulate parasite autophagy and differentiation. We conclude that both polyamine metabolism and autophagy are key processes during T. cruzi metacyclogenesis that could be exploited as drug target to avoid the parasite cycle progression.