Analysis of metabolic flow control in Trypanosoma Cruzi

Abstract

Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent for Chagas´ disease, uses amino acids and carbohydrates as energy and carbon sources. As already described, several amino acids also participate in other fundamental processes in the parasite´s the life cycle such as differentiation and resistance to different stresses. It was shown in the literature that specifically proline has several roles, participating of the energy metabolism, osmoregulation, metacyclogenesis, host-cell invasion, intracellular epimastigotes to trypomastigotes differentiation and resistance to different types of stress, in particular to oxidative stress. In addition, unpublished data from our laboratory showed that both, degradation and biosynthesis of proline are crucial in T. cruzi biology. Since all the enzymes involved in the metabolism of this amino acid were biochemically characterized by our group, we propose to initiate the development of a mathematical model to be used as a tool for the computational analysis of metabolic flows in the proline metabolism in T. cruzi. (AU)