Beyond Blood: African Trypanosomes on the Move

Krüger, Tim; Schuster, Sarah; Engstler, Markus

doi:10.1016/j.pt.2018.08.002

Cited by 33 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Once taken up by a tsetse during a blood meal, slender forms presumably die, whereas stumpy forms differentiate into procyclic forms in the midgut (Rico et al, 2013 ). These, in turn, will differentiate into non-replicative mesocyclics that migrate as swarms toward the anterior part of the fly where they differentiate into long epimastigotes (Kruger et al, 2018 ). Epimastigotes divide asymmetrically into long and short forms, with the highly mobile long forms migrating toward the salivary glands of the tsetse, while the short epimastigotes differentiate into metacyclic forms, completing the life cycle (Buscher et al, 2017 ).…”

Section: A Life Of Adaptations: From Vector To Host and Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleeping Sickness: A Tale of Two Clocks

Rijo‐Ferreira

Takahashi

2020

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

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Sleeping sickness is caused by a eukaryotic unicellular parasite known to infect wild animals, cattle, and humans. It causes a fatal disease that disrupts many rhythmic physiological processes, including daily rhythms of hormonal secretion, temperature regulation, and sleep, all of which are under circadian (24-h) control. In this review, we summarize research on sleeping sickness parasite biology and the impact it has on host health. We also consider the possible evolutionary advantages of sleep and circadian deregulation for the parasite.

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Section: A Life Of Adaptations: From Vector To Host and Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleeping Sickness: A Tale of Two Clocks

Rijo‐Ferreira

Takahashi

2020

Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.

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“…The unicellular parasite Trypanosoma brucei morphs through a series of developmental stages during its life cycle in the tsetse fly vector and its mammalian hosts [1]. The uniflagellated, fusiform morphotypes have characteristic lengths and motility behaviours [2,3]. The procyclic form is the first type to develop after the cells are taken up by the fly during bloodmeals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-cell motile behaviour of $${Trypanosoma\, brucei}$$ in thin-layered fluid collectives

et al. 2021

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We describe a system for the analysis of an important unicellular eukaryotic flagellate in a confining and crowded environment. The parasite Trypanosoma brucei is arguably one of the most versatile microswimmers known. It has unique properties as a single microswimmer and shows remarkable adaptations (not only in motility, but prominently so), to its environment during a complex developmental cycle involving two different hosts. Specific life cycle stages show fascinating collective behaviour, as millions of cells can be forced to move together in extreme confinement. Our goal is to examine such motile behaviour directly in the context of the relevant environments. Therefore, for the first time, we analyse the motility behaviour of trypanosomes directly in a widely used assay, which aims to evaluate the parasites behaviour in collectives, in response to as yet unknown parameters. In a step towards understanding whether, or what type of, swarming behaviour of trypanosomes exists, we customised the assay for quantitative tracking analysis of motile behaviour on the single-cell level. We show that the migration speed of cell groups does not directly depend on single-cell velocity and that the system remains to be simplified further, before hypotheses about collective motility can be advanced. Graphic abstract

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“…They can swim in liquid, but the fly gut and salivary glands can be densely packed with parasite cells (Schuster et al, 2017). When they are free in a volume of liquid, such as the bloodstream, they swim far slower than the fluid flow (Heddergott et al, 2012; Krüger et al, 2018), yet they can invade tissues (Capewell et al, 2016; Trindade et al, 2016). Taken together, this suggests complex motility functions, which includes collective motion of densely packed cells (Eliaz et al, 2017; Imhof and Roditi, 2015; Oberholzer et al, 2010; Saada et al, 2015) and surface-bound antibody clearance (Cheung et al, 2016; Engstler et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy for three-dimensional visualisation of beating flagella

Walker

Wheeler

2019

Journal of Cell Science

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Analysis of flagellum and cilium beating in three dimensions (3D) is important for understanding cell motility, and using fluorescence microscopy to do so would be extremely powerful. Here, high-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy, where the light path is split to visualise multiple focal planes simultaneously, was used to reconstruct Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania mexicana movement in 3D. These species are uniflagellate unicellular parasites for which motility is vital. It was possible to use either a fluorescent stain or a genetically-encoded fluorescent protein to visualise flagellum and cell movement at 200 Hz frame rates. This addressed two open questions regarding Trypanosoma and Leishmania flagellum beating, which contributes to their swimming behaviours: 1) how planar is the L. mexicana flagellum beat, and 2) what is the nature of flagellum beating during T. brucei ‘tumbling’? We showed that L. mexicana has notable deviations from a planar flagellum beat, and that during tumbling the T. brucei flagellum bends the cell and beats only in the distal portion to achieve cell reorientation. This demonstrates high-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy as a powerful tool for the analysis of beating flagella.

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Beyond Blood: African Trypanosomes on the Move

Cited by 33 publications

References 61 publications

Sleeping Sickness: A Tale of Two Clocks

Sleeping Sickness: A Tale of Two Clocks

Single-cell motile behaviour of $${Trypanosoma\, brucei}$$ in thin-layered fluid collectives

High-speed multifocal plane fluorescence microscopy for three-dimensional visualisation of beating flagella

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