Parasite Genome Projects and the Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Initiative

Abstract

The determination of the complete nucleotide sequence of an organism has attracted researchers ever since there were technical means to do it. The first virus to be sequenced, using enzymatic RNA sequencing, was MS2 (Fiers et al. 1976), followed by bacteriophage ΦX (Sanger et al. 1977a) using his enzymatic method (Sanger et al. 1977b) and SV40 (Fiers et al. 1978), using Maxam and Gilbert's (1977) chemical degradation method. The human mitochondrial genome (Anderson et al. 1981), the lambda genome (Sanger et al. 1982) and bacteriophage T7 (Dunn & Studier 1983) were other important marks, and much was learned about the lifecycle of viruses and their interaction with the infected host cell. Indeed, a considerable number of viral genomes have been determined since then, both from plant, animal and human infections. However, sequencing was quite tedious, and only in the late eighties, daring plans were made to launch a massive attack on the human genome, with the advent of automated sequencing. Much has happened since its official start in 1990, and today, hardly any scientist will ignore, let alone deny the usefulness and technical feasibility of the hu- man genome project. Considerable technical progress has been made in large scale mapping and sequencing, and the cost and speed of the project is improving faster than anticipated. Quantum leap improvements in sequencing are being projected for the coming years (ex. Burke et al. 1997), which will transform molecular biology into a discipline of bioinformatics, study of structure-function (Bassett et al. 1996, Oliver 1996, and manipulation of living organisms, rather than the analytical science it has been over the last 15 years.The start of a great number of genome projects on other organisms than human has been a remarkable, and at first unexpected phenomenon. On the one hand they figured as an "exercise" on smaller genomes, but undoubtedly they also came about due to the enthusiasm of molecular biologists, once it was realized that (the human) genome projects were not a crazy undertaking (Tilghman 1996). Thus, the complete genomes of Haemophilus influenzae Rd, Mycoplasma genitalium, Methanococcus jannaschii, Synechocystis sp. (PCC 6803), Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli K-12 are now known, and a great number of other genome sequences are being determined, mainly from bacteria, but also from many higher eukaryotes, including plant and animal "model organisms". We can thus expect that our understanding of the complete gene set of many different life forms will increase dramatically over the coming years, and that regulation of gene expression, short and long range genomic DNA interactions, interaction of organisms with their environment, genome evolution,

Trypanosoma cruzi biochemical changes and cell death induced by an organometallic platinum‐based compound

“…This strain has been thoroughly studied and is well characterized, being the reference organism used in the "Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project". [21][22][23] There are six major phylogenetic groups of Trypanosoma cruzi strains named discrete typing units (DTUs) I-VI by international consensus. DTUs are different in many aspects such as geographical distribution, host preference, disease course, and pharmacological response.…”

A Brief View of the Surface Membrane Proteins fromTrypanosoma cruzi

“…For a comprehensive review see [12, 13]. Despite the fact that many T. cruzi isolates have been described through the years, CL Brener was the reference organism used in the “ Trypanosoma cruzi Genome Project.” CL Brener is a clone derived from CL strain belonging to Tc VI lineage and has been thoroughly studied and well characterized [14–16]. The CL Brener genome sequence is now available and became the T. cruzi genome reference for other sequencing projects [13, 14, 17].…”

TcArf1: a Trypanosoma cruzi ADP-ribosylation factor

“…Five expressed sequence tags from the T. cruzi genome project (Degrave et al 1997) corresponding to the TcArf1 sequence are found in the database (accession numbers AAF82562, AA556089, AI668032, AA960736, AI562788). Their 5¢UTR sequences, together with the sequence obtained in the cDNA library screening, help us to map trans-splicing acceptor sites at the TcArf1 5¢UTR.…”