Sleeping Sickness Parasite Uses Multiple Metabolic Pathways: Study

Trypanosomes were found to synthesize sugars using an unexpected metabolic pathway called gluconeogenesis, revealed study published in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by David Horn of the University of Dundee in the UK, and colleagues.

Trypanosomes cause human sleeping sickness and animal African trypanosomiases, which are a range of devastating but neglected tropical diseases affecting cattle, other livestock and horses. The mammalian stage of the parasite circulates in the bloodstream, a nutrient-rich environment with constant temperature and pH and high glucose concentration. Bloodstream-form African trypanosomes are thought to rely exclusively upon a metabolic pathway called glycolysis, using glucose as a substrate, for ATP production. In contrast to this view, Horn and colleagues show that bloodstream-form trypanosomes can use glycerol for ATP production and for gluconeogenesis -- a metabolic pathway that results in the generation of glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates.