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Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE, 4(8), p. e60209, 2013

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060209

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Predicting the Proteins of Angomonas deanei, Strigomonas culicis and Their Respective Endosymbionts Reveals New Aspects of the Trypanosomatidae Family

Journal article published in 2013 by Allan Cezar De Azevedo Martins, Maria Cristina Machado Motta ORCID, Silvana Sant’Anna de Souza, Silvana Sant'Anna De Souza, Oberdan de Lima Cunha, Carolina Moura Costa Catta-Preta ORCID, Allan Cezar de Azevedo Martins ORCID, Allan Cezar Azevedo Martins, Luiz Gonzaga Paula de Almeida ORCID, Rosane Silva, Célia Maria Almeida Soares, Luiz Gonzaga Paula de Almeida, Cecilia Coimbra Klein, Ana Cristina Colabardini, Bruna de Araujo Lima and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Endosymbiont-bearing trypanosomatids have been considered excellent models for the study of cell evolution because the host protozoan co-evolves with an intracellular bacterium in a mutualistic relationship. Such protozoa inhabit a single invertebrate host during their entire life cycle and exhibit special characteristics that group them in a particular phylogenetic cluster of the Trypanosomatidae family, thus classified as monoxenics. In an effort to better understand such symbiotic association, we used DNA pyrosequencing and a reference-guided assembly to generate reads that predicted 16,960 and 12,162 open reading frames (ORFs) in two symbiont-bearing trypanosomatids, Angomonas deanei (previously named as Crithidia deanei) and Strigomonas culicis (first known as Blastocrithidia culicis), respectively. Identification of each ORF was based primarily on TriTrypDB using tblastn, and each ORF was confirmed by employing getorf from EMBOSS and Newbler 2.6 when necessary. The monoxenic organisms revealed conserved housekeeping functions when compared to other trypanosomatids, especially compared with Leishmania major. However, major differences were found in ORFs corresponding to the cytoskeleton, the kinetoplast, and the paraflagellar structure. The monoxenic organisms also contain a large number of genes for cytosolic calpain-like and surface gp63 metalloproteases and a reduced number of compartmentalized cysteine proteases in comparison to other TriTryp organisms, reflecting adaptations to the presence of the symbiont. The assembled bacterial endosymbiont sequences exhibit a high A+T content with a total of 787 and 769 ORFs for the Angomonas deanei and Strigomonas culicis endosymbionts, respectively, and indicate that these organisms hold a common ancestor related to the Alcaligenaceae family. Importantly, both symbionts contain enzymes that complement essential host cell biosynthetic pathways, such as those for amino acid, lipid and purine/pyrimidine metabolism. These findings increase our understanding of the intricate symbiotic relationship between the bacterium and the trypanosomatid host and provide clues to better understand eukaryotic cell evolution.