Parasitology

Biography

Biography: Vyacheslav Yurchenko

Abstract

The co-infection cases involving dixenous Leishmania spp. (mostly of the L. donovani complex) and presumably monoxenous trypanosomatids in mammalian hosts including humans are well documented. The main opportunistic parasite has been identified as Leptomonas seymouri of the sub-family Leishmaniinae. The molecular mechanisms allowing a typical parasite of insects to withstand elevated temperature and substantially different conditions of vertebrate's tissue are not understood. Here we demonstrate that L. seymouri is well pre-adapted for the environment of the warm-blooded host. We sequenced the genome and compared the whole transcriptome profiles of this species cultivated at low (mimicking insect) and high (mimicking vertebrate host) temperatures and identified genes and pathways differentially expressed under these experimental conditions (for example, genes involved in oxidative stress response, etc). Importantly, L. seymouri can survive in sand fly insect vectors capable of transmitting Leishmania parasites, Phlebotomus argentipes and P. orientalis, although the intensity of infection compared to Leishmania is significantly lower. We concluded that although Leptomonas seymouri has a capacity to co-infect vertebrates along with Leishmania spp., additional factors are required for establishing a stable infection of this monoxenous trypanosomatid.