Abstract
In the present work, we investigated molecular mechanisms governing thermal resistance of a monoxenous trypanosomatid Crithidia luciliae thermophila, which we reclassified as a separate species C. thermophila. We analyzed morphology, growth kinetics, and transcriptomic profiles of flagellates cultivated at low (23°C) and elevated (34°C) temperature. When maintained at high temperature, they grew significantly faster, became shorter, with genes involved in sugar metabolism and mitochondrial stress protection significantly upregulated. Comparison with another thermoresistant monoxenous trypanosomatid, Leptomonas seymouri, revealed dramatic differences in transcription profiles of the two species with only few genes showing the same expression pattern. This disparity illustrates differences in the biology of these two parasites and distinct mechanisms of their thermotolerance, a prerequisite for living in warm-blooded vertebrates.
MeSH terms
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Animals
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Biochemical Phenomena / genetics
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Crithidia / genetics*
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Gene Expression / genetics
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Insecta / genetics*
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Temperature
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Transcriptome / genetics
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Up-Regulation / genetics
Grants and funding
Support from the Grant Agency of Czech Republic (
www.gacr.cz) awards 17-10656S to V.Y. and A.B., 15-16406S to A.B. and T.P., 14-23986S to J.L., 16-18699S to J.L. and V.Y., Moravskoslezský kraj research initiative (
www.msk.cz) DT01-021358 to V.Y. and A.K., Statutory City of Ostrava (
www.ostrava.cz) award 0924/2016/ŠaS to A.K. who was also supported by the grant 15-29-02734 from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (
www.rfbr.ru), and the COST action (
www.cost.eu) CM1307 and LD14076 to J.L. and J.V., respectively is kindly acknowledged. This work was also financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (
www.msmt.cz) in the “National Feasibility Program I”, project LO1208 “TEWEP” and the EU Operational programme on Research and Development for Innovation (ec.europa.eu), project CZ.1.05/2.1.00/19.0388. A.B., A.I., A.G.-I., V.S., N.K., and D.G. were funded by grant from the University of Ostrava (
www.osu.cz) SGS16/PRF/2017. P.F. was supported by the Institutional Development Program of the University of Ostrava (
www.osu.cz). The access to computing and storage facilities owned by parties and projects of the National Grid Infrastructure MetaCentrum in the Czech Republic (
www.metacentrum.cz) was provided under the program LM2010005. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.