Trypanosoma cruzi strain and starvation-driven mitochondrial RNA editing and transcriptome variability

Sara Zimmer, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences, published a new article about chagas disease, titled "Trypanosoma cruzi strain and starvation-driven mitochondrial RNA editing and transcriptome variability" in the publication RNA.

Chagas disease is a South and Central American infectious disease that typically manifests as cardiomyopathy, often in fairly young individuals. Our study addresses the question: as the parasitic causative agent of Chagas disease receives a stimulus that will drive a non-infectious population of parasites to be able to infect human cells, how and why does it alter expression of its mitochondrial genome? We also see how well-conserved these mechanisms are among different isolates of the parasite. These different isolates possess slight differences in their metabolism that could impact their ability to cause disease and to exist in reservoir mammalian species and the various insect vectors that transmit them.

Gerasimov ES, Ramirez-Barrios R, Yurchenko V, Zimmer SL. 2022. Trypanosoma cruzi strain and starvation-driven mitochondrial RNA editing and transcriptome variability. RNA. 28(7):993-1012. https://doi.org/10.1261/rna.079088.121