Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE
Volume 199, Issue 10, Pages 1445-1450Publisher
ROCKEFELLER UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1084/jem.20030635
Keywords
Trypanosoma brucei; trypanosomiasis; glycosylphosphatidylinositol; trans-sialidase; GPI transamidase
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Funding
- Wellcome Trust Funding Source: Medline
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The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei, which causes sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana disease in livestock, is spread via blood-sucking Tsetse flies. In the fly's intestine, the trypanosomes survive digestive and trypanocidal environments, proliferate, and translocate into the salivary gland, where they become infectious to the next mammalian host. Here, we show that for successful survival in Tsetse flies, the trypanosomes use trans-sialidase to transfer sialic acids that they cannot synthesize from host's glycoconjugates to the glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs), which are abundantly expressed on their surface. Trypanosomes lacking sialic acids due to a defective generation of GPI-anchored trans-sialidase could not survive in the intestine, but regained the ability to survive when sialylated by means of soluble trans-sialidase. Thus, surface sialic acids appear to protect the parasites from the digestive and trypanocidal environments in the midgut of Tsetse flies.
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