Leishmania infantum expresses a mitochondrial nuclease homologous to EndoG that migrates to the nucleus in response to an apoptotic stimulus

Overexpression of MitochondrialLeishmania majorAscorbate Peroxidase Enhances Tolerance to Oxidative Stress-Induced Programmed Cell Death and Protein Damage

“…4D). Although mitochondrial endonuclease G gradually decreased with time of treatment in both types of cells, cytosolic endonuclease G was not increased after 4 h. These results suggested that the cytosolic endonuclease G might be translocated into the nucleus after 4 h of treatment (9,21,47). The equal band intensities corresponding to HSP 60 for the mitochondrial extracts and L. donovani adenosine kinase for the cytoplasm extracts served as loading controls.…”

“…We next tested whether overexpression of LmAPX protected L. major cells against oxidative stress-mediated release of another cell death protein, Leishmania endonuclease G (9,21,47), by comparing endonuclease G released from the mitochondria to the cytoplasm in control and LmAPX-overexpressing cells upon treatment with cell death stimuli. Immunoblotting with anti-endonuclease G antibody for mitochondrial and cytosolic extracts prepared from parasites showed gradual translocation of endonuclease G to the cytosol with time upon H 2 O 2 or CPT treatment (Fig.…”

“…Another peculiar aspect emerging from our experiments is the fact that although the TUNEL assay suggests that oxidant-induced DNA cleavage is blocked by overexpression of LmAPX, DNA degradation could not be completely blocked by using a caspase inhibitor. The reason for this discrepancy could be an involvement of oxidant-dependent caspase-like protease activation on one hand (6,16), but on the other hand it suggests the existence of some alternative oxidant-dependent apoptotic pathway (endonuclease G dependent) leading to nuclear fragmentation in Leishmania (9,21,47). Our endonuclease G release data presented in Fig.…”

Staurosporine-Induced Cell Death in <em>Trypanosoma brucei</em> and the Role of Endonuclease G during Apoptosis

“…Interestingly, endonuclease G (EndoG), another nuclease active during apoptosis in higher eukaryotes [14] [15], is, however, also expressed in kinetoplastids [16] [17]. This nuclease is encoded in nuclear DNA and is translocated into the mitochondrion, where it may be involved in replication and repair functions [18].…”

Trypanosomatid apoptosis: 'Apoptosis' without the canonical regulators

“…Such an example is EndoG, a well characterized nuclease from multicellular lineages implicated in caspase-independent programmed cell death by its translocation from the mitochondrion to the nucleus. 20 In a similar way, trypanosomatid EndoG acts as a pro-apoptotic nuclease, 21,22 present with TatD-like nuclease (a prokaryotic nuclease) and FEN-1 (a DNA repair protein) in two separate protein complexes. 23 These complexes are formed upon the translocation of EndoG to the nucleus from the mitochondrion of dying L. donovani promastigotes.…”