African trypanosomes cause human sleeping sickness and livestock trypanosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa. We present the sequence and analysis of the 11 megabase-sized chromosomes of Trypanosoma brucei. The 26-megabase genome contains 9068 predicted genes, including approximately 900 pseudogenes and approximately 1700 T.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhole-genome sequencing of the protozoan pathogen Trypanosoma cruzi revealed that the diploid genome contains a predicted 22,570 proteins encoded by genes, of which 12,570 represent allelic pairs. Over 50% of the genome consists of repeated sequences, such as retrotransposons and genes for large families of surface molecules, which include trans-sialidases, mucins, gp63s, and a large novel family (>1300 copies) of mucin-associated surface protein (MASP) genes. Analyses of the T.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTemperature shock of the hyperthermophilic methanarchaeon Methanococcus jannaschii from its optimal growth temperature of 85 degrees C to 65 degrees C and 95 degrees C resulted in different transcriptional responses characteristic of both the direction of shock (heat or cold shock) and whether the shock was lethal. Specific outcomes of lethal heat shock to 95 degrees C included upregulation of genes encoding chaperones, and downregulation of genes encoding subunits of the H+ transporting ATP synthase. A gene encoding an alpha subunit of a putative prefoldin was also upregulated, which may comprise a novel element in the protein processing pathway in M.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe archaeal transcription apparatus is chimeric: its core components (RNA polymerase and basal factors) closely resemble those of eukaryotic RNA polymerase II, but the putative archaeal transcriptional regulators are overwhelmingly of bacterial type. Particular interest attaches to how these bacterial-type effectors, especially activators, regulate a eukaryote-like transcription system. The hyperthermophilic archaeon Methanocaldococcus jannaschii encodes a potent transcriptional activator, Ptr2, related to the Lrp/AsnC family of bacterial regulators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report here the sequence of chromosome II from Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of African sleeping sickness. The 1.2-Mb pairs encode about 470 predicted genes organised in 17 directional clusters on either strand, the largest cluster of which has 92 genes lined up over a 284-kb region.
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