Genetic analysis of spermidine synthase from Leishmania donovani
| Autor: | Armando Jardim, Nicola S. Carter, Olle Heby, Sigrid C. Roberts, Buddy Ullman, Yuqui Jiang |
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| Rok vydání: | 2001 |
| Předmět: |
Spermidine
Auxotrophy Genes Protozoan Immunoblotting Molecular Sequence Data Trypanothione Spermine Biology Spermidine Synthase chemistry.chemical_compound parasitic diseases Polyamines Animals Amino Acid Sequence Cloning Molecular Molecular Biology Cadaverine Base Sequence Sequence Analysis DNA DNA Protozoan Molecular biology Culture Media chemistry Biochemistry biology.protein Putrescine Parasitology Spermidine synthase Polyamine Sequence Alignment Gene Deletion Leishmania donovani |
| Zdroj: | Molecular and biochemical parasitology. 115(2) |
| ISSN: | 0166-6851 |
| Popis: | The polyamine biosynthetic pathway of protozoan parasites has been validated as a target in antiparasitic chemotherapy. To investigate this pathway at the biochemical and genetic level in a model parasite, the gene encoding spermidine synthase (SPDSYN), a key polyamine biosynthetic enzyme, has been cloned and sequenced from Leishmania donovani . The L. donovani SPDSYN gene encodes a polypeptide of 300 amino acids that exhibits 56% amino acid identity with the human counterpart. SPDSYN is present as a single copy gene in the leishmanial genome and encodes a 1.6 kb transcript. Employing SPDSYN flanking sequences to construct drug resistance cassettes, a Δ spdsyn knockout strain of L. donovani was created by double targeted gene replacement. This Δ spdsyn line could not convert putrescine to spermidine and was auxotrophic for polyamines. The polyamine auxotrophy could be circumvented by exogenous spermidine but not by putrescine (1,4-diaminobutane), cadaverine (1,5-diaminopentane), 1,3-diaminopropane, or spermine. Incubation of the null mutant in polyamine-deficient medium resulted in a rapid depletion in the intracellular spermidine level with a concomitant elevation of the putrescine pool. In addition, the level of trypanothione, a spermidine-containing thiol, was reduced, whereas the glutathione pool increased 3–4-fold. These data establish that SPDSYN is an essential enzyme in L. donovani promastigotes. The molecular and cellular reagents created in this investigation provide a foundation for subsequent structure-function and inhibitor design studies on this key polyamine biosynthetic enzyme. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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