Genome-wide gene expression profiling analysis of Leishmania major and Leishmania infantum developmental stages reveals substantial differences between the two species

Abstract

BackgroundLeishmania parasites cause a diverse spectrum of diseases in humans ranging from spontaneously healing skin lesions (e.g., L. major) to life-threatening visceral diseases (e.g., L. infantum). The high conservation in gene content and genome organization between Leishmania major and Leishmania infantum contrasts their distinct pathophysiologies, suggesting that highly regulated hierarchical and temporal changes in gene expression may be involved.ResultsWe used a multispecies DNA oligonucleotide microarray to compare whole-genome expression patterns of promastigote (sandfly vector) and amastigote (mammalian macrophages) developmental stages between L. major and L. infantum. Seven per cent of the total L. infantum genome and 9.3% of the L. major genome were differentially expressed at the RNA level throughout development. The main variations were found in genes involved in metabolism, cellular organization and biogenesis, transport and genes encoding unknown function. Remarkably, this comparative global interspecies analysis demonstrated that only 10–12% of the differentially expressed genes were common to L. major and L. infantum. Differentially expressed genes are randomly distributed across chromosomes further supporting a posttranscriptional control, which is likely to involve a variety of 3'UTR elements.ConclusionThis study highlighted substantial differences in gene expression patterns between L. major and L. infantum. These important species-specific differences in stage-regulated gene expression may contribute to the disease tropism that distinguishes L. major from L. infantum.

Genome-wide analysis of 3′-untranslated regions supports the existence of post-transcriptional regulons controlling gene expression in trypanosomes

“…For diverse groups of genes, this similarity in mRNA levels can be extended to concerted changes during differentiation or in perturbation experiments, suggesting that the transcriptome of these parasites is organized in clusters of transcripts exhibiting similar transcript abundance profiles (Ouellette & Papadopoulou, 2009; Rochette et al, 2008; Veitch et al, 2010). Also the abundance of certain ncRNAs varies between distinct forms of T. brucei (Michaeli et al, 2012).…”

Discovering Regulatory Overlapping RNA Transcripts

“…Their approach is limited, however, to the quantification of transcript intensities whose locations have already been specificed from gene annotations or an external datasource. Rochette et al have reported a set of overlapping transcripts at a genome-wide level in the parasite Leishmania [17]. These transcripts were identified by experimental means (5 -RACE) in a genome significantly smaller than yeast, however, and do not represent a comprehensive computational approach to transcript discovery.…”

Cloning, expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of glyoxalase I fromLeishmania infantum

“…This may be attributed to differences in stage-regulated gene-expression patterns between L. infantum and L. major (Rochette et al, 2008), but may also arise from amino-acid differences in the respective enzymes.…”