Small non-coding RNAs derived from transfer RNAs have been identified as a broadly conserved prokaryotic and eukaryotic response to stress. Their presence coincides with changes in developmental state associated with gene expression regulation. In the epimastigote form of Trypanosoma cruzi, tRNA fragments localize to posterior cytoplasmic granules. In the infective metacyclic form of the parasi...

Trypanosomes must sense and respond to environmental change in order to progress through their life cycles. The American trypanosome, Trypanosoma cruzi, differentiates from the noninfective epimastigote form to the infective metacyclic form spontaneously in axenic culture. Here, we investigate the initial stimulus for that change and demonstrate that T. cruzi epimastigotes sense limitation of g...

American trypanosomiasis is a zoonosis of worldwide medical importance and currently there is no effective treatment in chronic patients, hence the importance of the study of protein function of the parasite with the objective of finding new drug targets and to know better the biology of the agent causal (Trypanosoma cruzi). T. cruzi is an RNAi-negative parasite, therefore the silencing genes s...

Some medicinal plants are a potential source of new drugs, in order to improve the treatment of Chagas disease whose treatment is still a challenge. In this study, the in vitro anti-epimastigote activity of certain fractions of Achillea biebersteinii, A. millefolium, Satureja mutica and S. macrantha was evaluated. Diethyl ether fractions of Achillea species and acetone fractions of Satureja spe...

Some medicinal plants are a potential source of new drugs, in order to improve the treatment of Chagas disease whose treatment is still a challenge. In this study, the in vitro anti-epimastigote activity of certain fractions of Achillea biebersteinii, A. millefolium, Satureja mutica and S. macrantha was evaluated. Diethyl ether fractions of Achillea species and acetone fractions of Satureja spe...

The antibody response to Trypanosoma cruzi epimastigote and trypomastigote stages, as well as to laminin, was studied in several groups of chagasic patients. In six patients who were cured of the parasite, the serum antibody titers as revealed by indirect immunofluorescence and hemagglutination tests against epimastigotes (conventional serology) and a complement-mediated lysis test with living ...

Trypanosoma cruzi has a complex mucin gene family of 500 members with hypervariable regions expressed preferentially in vertebrate associated stages of the parasite. In this work, a novel mucin-type gene family is reported, composed of two groups of genes organized in independent tandems and having very short open reading frames. The structures of deduced proteins share the N and C termini but ...