Directing the killing of Leishmania: one biotechnological advance.

Abstract

Molecular mechanisms involved in gene expression control in Leishmania are unusual and not fully comprehended. In the study, we characterized a new method to drive parasite death specifically to amastigote stage. The pFL-AMA plasmid including sequences encoding for toxic proteins were used to kill the parasite specifically to amastigote stage in vitro and in vivo conditions. We show in this work that this plasmid confers a restricted amastigote-stage gene expression in Leishmania, representing a genetic method capable to drive a programmed parasite death to pathogenic intracellular form.