Abstract
Intracellular parasites such as Trypanosoma cruzi need to acquire valuable carbon sources from the host cell to replicate. Here, we investigated the energetic metabolism of T. cruzi during metacyclogenesis through the determination of enzymatic activities and quantification by HPLC of glycolytic and Krebs cycle short-chain carboxylic acids. Altered concentrations in pyruvate, acetate, succinate, and glycerate were measured during the growth of epimastigote in the complex medium BHI and their differentiation to trypomastigotes in the chemically defined medium, TAU3AAG. These alterations should represent significant differential metabolic modifications utilized by either form to generate energy. This paper is the first work dealing with the intracellular organic acid concentration measurement in T. cruzi parasites. Although it confirms the previous assumption of the importance of carbohydrate metabolism, it yields an essential improvement in T. cruzi metabolism knowledge.
Highlights
Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease, presents during its life cycle three primary morphologically and physiologically distinct evolutive forms designated as epimastigote, trypomastigote, and amastigote [1]
We focused our attention on determining the short-chain carboxylic acids produced from glycolysis and Krebs cycle intermediates by ion-exchange high-performance liquid chromatography during the metacyclogenesis of T. cruzi parasites
Separate organic acid analyses were performed in populations of parasites grown in a brain heath infusion (BHI) complex and TAU3AAG chemically defined media
Summary
Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease, presents during its life cycle three primary morphologically and physiologically distinct evolutive forms designated as epimastigote, trypomastigote, and amastigote [1]. As the epimastigote (epi) forms are non-infective, a critical step in the lifecycle of T. cruzi is its transformation into the highly infective metacyclic trypomastigote (trypo) forms. This process, designated as metacyclogenesis, can be reproduced in vitro using several specific growth conditions [2,3,4], including a chemically defined medium [5,6]. Previous studies have reported that both the epimastigote and trypomastigote forms can obtain energy from glucose, amino acids, fatty acids, and glycerol metabolism [15,16,17,18,19,20]. It has been postulated that this parasite oxides amino acids to generate ATP [22,23]
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