出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2013/06/12 22:32:05」(JST)
| Trypanosoma brucei | |
|---|---|
| Trypanosoma brucei brucei TREU667 (Bloodstream form, phase contrast picture. Black bar indicates 10 µm.) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Protista |
| Phylum: | Euglenozoa |
| Class: | Kinetoplastea |
| Order: | Trypanosomatida |
| Genus: | Trypanosoma |
| Species: | T. brucei |
| Binomial name | |
| Trypanosoma brucei Plimmer & Bradford, 1899 |
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| Subspecies | |
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T. b. brucei |
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Trypanosoma brucei is a species of Salivarian trypanosome. T. brucei causes African trypanosomiasis, known also as 'African sleeping sickness' in humans and 'nagana' in animals. T. brucei has traditionally been grouped into three sub-species: T. b. brucei, T. b. gambiense and T. b. rhodesiense, the latter two being human-infective.
Transmission of T. brucei between mammal hosts is usually via an insect vector, the tsetse fly. T. brucei parasites undergo complex morphological changes as they move between insect and mammal over the course of their life cycle. The mammalian bloodstream forms are notable for their variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) coats, which undergo remarkable antigenic variation, enabling persistent evasion of host adaptive immunity and chronic infection. There is an urgent need for the development of new drug therapies as current treatments can prove fatal to the patient.
Whilst not historically regarded as T. brucei subspecies due to their different means of transmission, clinical presentation, and loss of kinetoplast DNA, genetic analyses reveal that T. equiperdum and T. evansi are derivatives of T. b. brucei, and thus are members of the brucei clade.[1]
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The insect vector for T. brucei is the tsetse fly (genus Glossina). The parasite lives in the midgut of the fly (procyclic form), whereupon it migrates to the salivary glands for injection to the mammalian host on biting. The parasite lives within the bloodstream (bloodstream form) where it can reinfect the fly vector after biting. Later during a T. brucei infection the parasite may migrate to other areas of the host. A T. brucei infection may be transferred human to human via bodily fluid exchange, primarily blood transfer.
There are three different sub-species of T. brucei, which cause different variants of trypanosomiasis.
The structure of the cell is fairly typical of eukaryotes (see eukaryotic cell). All major organelles are seen, including the nucleus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus etc. Unusual features include the single large mitochondria with the mitochondrial DNA structure known as the kinetoplast, and its association with the basal body of the flagellum. The cytoskeleton is made up primarily of microtubules. The cell surface of the bloodstream form features a dense coat of variable surface glycoproteins (VSGs) which is replaced by an equally dense coat of procyclins when the parasite differentiates into the procylic in the tsetse fly midgut.
Trypanosomatids show specific cellular forms of which two are adopted by Trypanosoma brucei at different stages of the life cycle:
These names are derived from the Greek mastig- meaning whip, referring to the trypanosome's whip-like flagellum.
T. brucei is found as a trypomastigote in the slender, stumpy, procyclic and metacyclic forms. The procylic form differentiates to the proliferitive epimastigote form in the salivary glands of the insect. Unlike some other trypanosomatids, the promastigote and amastigote form do not form part of the T.brucei life cycle.
The genome of T. brucei is made up of:[4]
Most genes are held on the large chromosomes, with the minichromosomes carrying only VSG genes. The genome has been sequenced and is available online [1].
The mitochondrial genome is found condensed into the kinetoplast, an unusual feature unique to the kinetoplastea class. The kinetoplast and the basal body of the flagellum are strongly associated via a cytoskeletal structure.
Main section: The VSG coat
The surface of the trypanosome is covered by a dense coat of Variable Surface Glycoprotein (VSG), which allows persistence of an infecting trypanosome population in the host. See below.
The cytoskeleton is predominantly made up of microtubules, forming a subpellicular corset. The microtubules lie parallel to each other along the long axis of the cell, with the number of microtubules at any point roughly proportional to the circumference of the cell at that point. As the cell grows (including for mitosis) additional microtubules grow between the existing tubules, leading to semiconservative inheritance of the cytoskeleton. The microtubules are orientated + at the posterior and - at the anterior.
Microfilament and intermediate filaments also play an important role in the cytoskeleton, but these are generally overlooked.
The trypanosome flagellum has two main structures. It is made up of a typical flagellar axoneme which lies parallel to the paraflagellar rod, a lattice structure of proteins unique to the kinetoplastida, euglenoids and dinoflagellates.
The microtubules of the flagellar axoneme lie in the normal 9+2 arrangement, orientated with the + at the anterior end and the - in the basal body. The a cytoskeletal structure extends from the basal body to the kinetoplast. The flagellum is bound to the cytoskeleton of the main cell body by four specialised microtubules, which run parallel and in the same direction to the flagellar tubulin.
The flagellar function is twofold - locomotion via oscilations along the attached flagellum and cell body, and attachment to the fly gut during the procyclic phase.
The surface of the trypanosome is covered by a dense coat of ~5 x 106 molecules of Variable Surface Glycoprotein (VSG).[5] This coat enables an infecting T. brucei population to persistently evade the host's immune system, allowing chronic infection. The two properties of the VSG coat that allow immune evasion are:
VSG is highly immunogenic, and an immune response raised against a specific VSG coat will rapidly kill trypanosomes expressing this variant. Antibody-mediated trypanosome killing can also be observed in vitro by a complement-mediated lysis assay. However, with each cell division there is a possibility that one or both of the progeny will switch expression to change the VSG variant that is being expressed. The frequency of VSG switching has been measured to be approximately 0.1% per division.[7] As T. brucei populations can peak at a size of 1011 within a host [8] this rapid rate of switching ensures that the parasite population is constantly diverse. A diverse range of coats expressed by the trypanosome population means that the immune system is always one step behind: it takes several days for an immune response against a given VSG to develop, giving trypanosomes which switched VSG time to reproduce (and undergo further switching events) unhindered. Reiteration of this process prevents extinction of the infecting trypanosome population, allowing chronic persistence of parasites in the host, enhancing opportunities for transmission. The clinical effect of this cycle is successive 'waves' of parasitaemia (trypanosomes in the blood).[5]
VSG genes are hugely variable at the sequence level. However, for them to fulfill their shielding function, different VSGs have strongly conserved structural features. VSGs are made up of a highly variable N terminal domain of around 300 to 350 amino acids, and a more conserved C terminal domain of around 100 amino acids. N-terminal domains dimerise to form a bundle of four alpha helices, around which hang smaller structural features. This tertiary structure is well conserved between different VSGs (in spite of wide variation in amino acid sequence) allowing different VSGs to form the physical barrier required to shield the trypanosome's surface. VSG is anchored to the cell membrane via a glycophosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchor - a covalent linkage from the C terminus, to approximately four sugars, to a phosphatidylinositol phospholipid acid which lies in the cell membrane. VSGs form homodimers.
The source of VSG variability during infection is a large 'archive' of VSG genes present in the T. brucei genome. Some of these are full-length, intact genes; others are pseudogenes) typically with frameshift mutations, premature stop codons, or fragmentation. Expression of an antigenically different VSG can occur by simply switching to a different full-length VSG gene. However, only 5% of the archive is made up of such complete silent VSGs. To utilise the rest of the silent VSG archive, ‘mosaic’ VSGs can be formed by replacing part of the expressed VSG with a structurally homologous region from the archive.[9] The combinatorial nature of mosaic formation in conjunction with the huge silent VSG archive gives the parasite a theoretically limitless VSG library, and could be a major barrier to vaccine development.[10]
One major focus in trypanosome research is how all but one of the VSG genes are kept silent at a given time, and how these the active VSG is switched. The expressed VSG is always located in an Expression Site (ES), which are specialised expression loci found at the telomeres of some of the large and intermediate chromosomes. Each ES is a polycistronic unit, containing a number of Expression Site-Associated Genes (ESAGs) all expressed along with the active VSG. While multiple ES exist, only a single one is ever active at one time. A number of mechanisms appear to be involved in this process, but the exact nature of the silencing is still unclear.[11]
The VSG can be switched either by changing the active expression (from the active to a previously silent site) or by changing the VSG gene in the active site. The genome contains many copies of possible VSG genes, both on minichromosomes and in repeated sections in the interior of the chromosomes. These are generally silent, typically with omitted sections or premature stop codons, but are important in the evolution of new VSG genes. It is estimated up to 10% of the T.brucei genome may be made up of VSG genes or pseudogenes. Any of these genes can be moved into the active site by recombination for expression. Again, the exact mechanisms that control this are still only partially known.
The mitotic division of T.brucei is unusual compared to most eukaryotes. The nuclear membrane remains intact and the chromosomes do not condense during mitosis. The basal body, unlike the centrosome of most eukaryotic cells, does not play a role in the organisation of the spindle and instead is involved in division of the kinetoplast.
Stages of mitosis:
List of parasites (human)
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| リンク元 | 「Trypanosoma brucei gambiense」 |
-Trypanosoma gambiense