Aygul Ishemgulova
University of Ostrava,Czech Republic
Title: Common virulence factors in Leishmania infection
Biography
Biography: Aygul Ishemgulova
Abstract
Leishmania parasites cause a broad spectrum of clinical manifestations. This study is focused on virulence factors in Leishmania that are shared between two different Leishmania species. Common virulence factors are important for design of universal drug against leishmaniases. In this work we compared the expression profiles of the virulent and attenuated strains of L. major and different developmental stages of L. mexicana using next-generation sequencing. Avirulent line LV561/AV with attenuated infectivity for mice and sand fly vectors was obtained by long-term cultivation of the L. major virulent strain LV561 (LRC-L137; MHOM/IL/1967/Jericho-II). Whole transcriptome analysis revealed that 230 transcripts are upregulated in LV561/V (virulent) strain. Procyclic promastigote, metacyclic promastigote and amastigote stages were obtained by differentiation of L. mexicana in axenic culture. RNA-seq analysis revealed that 8 genes are up-regulated in infective for human metacyclic promastigotes; 276 genes are up-regulated in a blood-dwelling amastigotes. Among common virulence factors in Leishmania, e.g. genes that are up-regulated both in virulent strain of L. major and metacyclic promastigotes or amastigotes of L. mexicana, we found genes encoding for major surface protease gp63, casein kinase I, pteridine transporters and several hypothetical proteins.