Global analysis of protein complexes in Trypanosoma brucei using cross-linking mass spectrometry

Abstract

Trypanosoma brucei is a unicellular trypanosomatid parasite that causes sleeping sickness in humans. Its distribution is limited to sub-Saharan Africa, which is the habitat of its vector, tsetse fly. The treatments for sleeping sickness are expensive, inefficient and toxic and currently there is no vaccine. Thus, the lack of a good understanding of trypanosome biology limits the development of new therapeutic possibilities. Many intracellular biological processes are dependent not only on the stable physical association between two or more proteins, but also on their post-translational modifications (PTMs). In order to characterise the many roles of multi-protein complexes in biological processes, it is important to have robust methods for the quick and efficient analysis of their composition and dynamics. In this context, this project uses a mass spectrometry-based proteomic approaches for the efficient global analysis of protein complexes using in vivo protein cross-linking to characterise protein complexes in two different forms of T. brucei, procyclic and trypomastigote.