Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil.
Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States.
PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021 Mar 2;15(3):e0009230. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009230. eCollection 2021 Mar.
Leishmania major is the main causative agent of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the Old World. In Leishmania parasites, the lack of transcriptional control is mostly compensated by post-transcriptional mechanisms. Methylation of arginine is a conserved post-translational modification executed by Protein Arginine Methyltransferase (PRMTs). The genome from L. major encodes five PRMT homologs, including the cytosolic protein associated with several RNA-binding proteins, LmjPRMT7. It has been previously reported that LmjPRMT7 could impact parasite infectivity. In addition, a more recent work has clearly shown the importance of LmjPRMT7 in RNA-binding capacity and protein stability of methylation targets, demonstrating the role of this enzyme as an important epigenetic regulator of mRNA metabolism. In this study, we unveil the impact of PRMT7-mediated methylation on parasite development and virulence. Our data reveals that higher levels of LmjPRMT7 can impair parasite pathogenicity, and that deletion of this enzyme rescues the pathogenic phenotype of an attenuated strain of L. major. Interestingly, lesion formation caused by LmjPRMT7 knockout parasites is associated with an exacerbated inflammatory reaction in the tissue correlated with an excessive neutrophil recruitment. Moreover, the absence of LmjPRMT7 also impairs parasite development within the sand fly vector Phlebotomus duboscqi. Finally, a transcriptome analysis shed light onto possible genes affected by depletion of this enzyme. Taken together, this study highlights how post-transcriptional regulation can affect different aspects of the parasite biology.
利什曼原虫是旧世界皮肤利什曼病的主要病原体。在利什曼原虫中,转录控制的缺乏主要通过转录后机制来补偿。精氨酸的甲基化是一种保守的翻译后修饰,由蛋白精氨酸甲基转移酶(PRMTs)执行。L. major 的基因组编码了 5 种 PRMT 同源物,包括与几种 RNA 结合蛋白相关的细胞质蛋白 LmjPRMT7。先前的研究表明 LmjPRMT7 可以影响寄生虫的感染力。此外,最近的一项研究清楚地表明了 LmjPRMT7 在 RNA 结合能力和甲基化靶蛋白稳定性方面的重要性,证明了该酶作为 mRNA 代谢的重要表观遗传调节剂的作用。在这项研究中,我们揭示了 PRMT7 介导的甲基化对寄生虫发育和毒力的影响。我们的数据表明,较高水平的 LmjPRMT7 可以损害寄生虫的致病性,并且该酶的缺失可以挽救 L. major 弱毒菌株的致病性表型。有趣的是,LmjPRMT7 敲除寄生虫引起的病变与组织中炎症反应的加剧有关,与过度的中性粒细胞募集相关。此外,LmjPRMT7 的缺失也会损害沙蝇媒介 Phlebotomus duboscqi 中的寄生虫发育。最后,转录组分析揭示了可能受该酶缺失影响的基因。总之,这项研究强调了转录后调节如何影响寄生虫生物学的不同方面。
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