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About the Authors:
Juliana Ide Aoki
Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected] (JIA); [email protected] (LMFW)
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Bioscience, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1745-0310
Sandra Marcia Muxel
Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Bioscience, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Ricardo Andrade Zampieri
Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Bioscience, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Maria Fernanda Laranjeira-Silva
Roles Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Bioscience, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Karl Erik Müller
Roles Methodology, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Clinical Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Audun Helge Nerland
Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing - review & editing
Affiliation: Department of Clinical Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Lucile Maria Floeter-Winter
Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing
* E-mail: [email protected] (JIA); [email protected] (LMFW)
Affiliation: Department of Physiology, Institute of Bioscience, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, BrazilAbstract
Background
Leishmania is a protozoan parasite that alternates its life cycle between the sand-fly vector and the mammalian host. This alternation involves environmental changes and leads the parasite to dynamic modifications in morphology, metabolism, cellular signaling and regulation of gene expression to allow for a rapid adaptation to new conditions. The L-arginine pathway in L. amazonensis is important during the parasite life cycle and interferes in the establishment and maintenance of the infection in mammalian macrophages. Host arginase is an immune-regulatory enzyme that can reduce the production of nitric oxide by activated macrophages, directing the availability of L-arginine to the polyamine pathway, resulting in parasite replication. In this work, we performed transcriptional profiling to identify differentially expressed genes in L. amazonensis wild-type (La-WT) versus L. amazonensis arginase knockout (La-arg-) promastigotes and axenic amastigotes.
Methodology/Principal findings
A total of 8253 transcripts were identified in La-WT and La-arg- promastigotes and axenic amastigotes, about 60% of them codifying hypothetical proteins and 443...