Abstract
Force spectroscopy was used to measure the adhesion of Leishmania to synthetic mimics of galectins on the sand fly midgut.
Highlights
Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease caused by protozoa belonging to the genus Leishmania, transmitted by the bite of a female phlebotomine sand y.1–3 There are few effective drugs against leishmaniasis, many of which are toxic, and overreliance on them has led to a worldwide rise in drug resistance.[4]
The inset shows immunofluorescence images of an unfunctionalized and antibody-functionalized atomic force microscopy (AFM) tip, revealing the distribution of anti-LPG mAb. (i) Competition binding assays of wild type (WT) nectomonad promastigotes for sand fly midguts against different sugars
Mutant parasites de cient in LPG production demonstrated that LPG contributed to the midgut binding of this permissive vector species, which was restored by adding back an extra-chromosomal copy of the LPG1 gene
Summary
Leishmaniasis is a vector-borne disease caused by protozoa belonging to the genus Leishmania, transmitted by the bite of a female phlebotomine sand y.1–3 There are few effective drugs against leishmaniasis, many of which are toxic, and overreliance on them has led to a worldwide rise in drug resistance.[4]. To test the direct glycan–glycan interactions hypothesis, force spectroscopy was used to directly measure the strength of adhesion between LPG and a GalNAc-mimicking glycopolymer and to obtain nanoscale information on the localization and distribution of GalNAc-binding molecules on the surface of L. mexicana metacyclic and nectomonad promastigotes.
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