African trypanosomes are the causative agents of neglected tropical diseases affecting both humans and livestock. Disease control is highly challenging due to an increasing number of drug treatment failures. African trypanosomes are extracellular, blood-borne parasites that mainly rely on glycolysis for their energy metabolism within the mammalian host. Trypanosomal glycolytic enzymes are therefore of interest for the development of trypanocidal drugs. Here, we report the serendipitous discovery of a camelid single-domain antibody (sdAb aka Nanobody) that selectively inhibits the enzymatic activity of trypanosomatid (but not host) pyruvate kinases through an allosteric mechanism. By combining enzyme kinetics, biophysics, structural biology, and transgenic parasite survival assays, we provide a proof-of-principle that the sdAb-mediated enzyme inhibition negatively impacts parasite fitness and growth.

N ⁶,2’-O-dimethyladenosine (m⁶Am) is a modified nucleotide located at the first transcribed position in mRNA and snRNA that is essential for diverse physiological processes. m⁶Am mapping methods assume each gene uses a single start nucleotide. However, gene transcription usually involves multiple start sites, generating numerous 5’ isoforms. Thus, gene-level annotations cannot capture the diversity of m⁶Am modification in the transcriptome. Here, we describe CROWN-seq, which simultaneously identifies transcription-start nucleotides and quantifies m⁶Am stoichiometry for each 5’ isoform that initiates with adenosine. Using CROWN-seq, we map the m⁶Am landscape in nine human cell lines. Our findings reveal that m⁶Am is nearly always a high stoichiometry modification, with only a small subset of cellular mRNAs showing lower m⁶Am stoichiometry. We find that m⁶Am is associated with increased transcript expression and provide evidence that m⁶Am may be linked to transcription initiation associated with specific promoter sequences and initiation mechanisms. These data suggest a potential new function for m⁶Am in influencing transcription.