A new family of cell surface located purine transporters in Microsporidia and related fungal endoparasites
- Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Abstract
Plasma membrane-located transport proteins are key adaptations for obligate intracellular Microsporidia parasites, because they can use them to steal host metabolites the parasites need to grow and replicate. However, despite their importance, the functions and substrate specificities of most Microsporidia transporters are unknown. Here we provide functional data for a family of transporters conserved in all microsporidian genomes and also in the genomes of related endoparasites. The universal retention among otherwise highly reduced genomes indicates an important role for these transporters for intracellular parasites. Using Trachipleistophora hominis, a Microsporidia isolated from an HIV/AIDS patient, as our experimental model, we show that the proteins are ATP and GTP transporters located on the surface of parasites during their intracellular growth and replication. Our work identifies a new route for the acquisition of essential energy and nucleotides for a major group of intracellular parasites that infect most animal species including humans.
Data availability
New sequences data were submitted to GenBank:1) RNA-Seq data: BioProject PRJNA278775 with the BioSample accession numbers SAMN11265032-SAMN11265043 (one accession for each of the two samples per time point post infection).2) The new native PCR cloned gene sequences have the following GenBank accession numbers: ThMFS2_native: MH824667; ThMFS3_native: MH8246683) Codon-optimized genes for expression in E. coli have the following GenBank accession numbers: ThMFS1_synthetic: MH824663; ThMFS2_synthetic: MH824664; ThMFS3_synthetic: MH824665; ThMFS4_synthetic: MH824666These are all listed in the Materials and Methods section, see Key Resources Table.
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New native PCR cloned gene sequence (ThMFS2_native)NCBI GenBank, MH824667.
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New native PCR cloned gene sequence (ThMFS3_native)NCBI GenBank, MH824668.
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Annotation of genome dataNCBI Bioproject, PRJNA84343.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Wellcome (089803/Z/09/Z)
- T Martin Embley
European Research Council Advanced Investigator Program (ERC 2010-268701)
- T Martin Embley
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (PhD studentship)
- Andrew K Watson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Major et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A new family of cell surface located purine transporters in Microsporidia and related fungal endoparasites
eLife 8:e47037.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47037
Further reading
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