Poster #RP130
The Undergoing Leishmania Flagellar Proteome Project
Rodrigo Maggioni*, Diana Oliveira*, Raimundo Costa*, Ana Carolina Pacheco*, Michel Kamimura*, Marcilia Costa*, Fátima Oliveira*, Daniel Pinheiro*, Sarah Ramos*, Samara Silva*, Patricy Sales*
*Universidade Estadual do Ceará - UECE, Fortaleza, Brazil
Although conserved among organisms and important in numerous cell types, the cellular phenomenon termed intraflagellar transport (IFT) is neither well understood, nor it has been exploited in Leishmania virulence. A key virulence trait of pathogens is their ability to direct movement intracellularly and to spread from cell-to-cell. Harnessing components of the host microfilament system effects intracellular movement. This mode of locomotion by parasites is intriguing and has recently gained much interest as a model to examine microfilament assembly and function. How pathogens subvert the host cell contractile machinery to meet its own need to move and spread within infected host cells is still a great mystery that we can only give a glance. Considering the relative absence of studies dealing with IFT in Leishmania, in a direct opposition to the strategic importance of this cellular phenomenon in flagellate organisms, we focused our in silico analyses on identification of IFT proteins in this flagellar proteome undergoing project. We aim at characterizing the set of proteins in Leishmania spp related to the IFT complex (including IFT20, -52, 57, -88 among others) as a direct means of attributing their putative roles in infectivity. Databases and additional information will be available at http://nugen.lcc.uece.br/lpgate/?p=flagdb.