Articles - Trypanosoma

13 important questions on Articles - Trypanosoma

How is the bloodstream form protected against complement mediated lysis?

Its cells are densely coated with VSG homodimers that continuously switch

Where does the bloodstream form trypanosome express VSG?

At one of the +-20 telomeric bloodstream-form VSG expression site transcription units

Where does the metacyclic trypanosome express VSG? And when are they active?

Metacyclic VSG expression sites
They are active immediately after infection, but are quickly silenced when the parasite switches to exclusive activation of one of the bloodstream form VSG expression sites
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At which locations can you find VSG genes? And how many?

1. Silent subtelomeric VSG arrays, 1250-1400
2. Telomeric VSGs (minichromosomes), 150-250
3. VSGs in bloodstream form VSG expression sites, 20

What are the switch mechanisms and how do they work?

1. Gene conversion, a silent VSG gene is transfered to active expression site
2. Telomere exchange, the telomeres switch
3. In situ switch, active expression site is silenced while a silent one is activated

Which switch mechanism is the most important and why?

Gene conversion, because in theory it can move any of the silent VSGs into the active expression site

Which VSG genes are activated early in an infection?

Often those at telomeres, and are often located on minichromosomes

How do you get mosaic VSG?

Using segmental gene conversion, you can make a lot of new mosaic VSGs using different combinations of gene segments from the same set of VSG pseudogenes

How did VSG pseudogenes accumulate?

1. Genetic drift: many genes that are not often activated allows mutations to accumulate
2. Telomere: they are located on telomeres where there is little homology so less repair
3. Generation: when generating new VSG genes, many non-functional VSG genes are generated

How can the large amount of VSG genes be advantageous?

1. With little pseudogenes you combine different segments to create many VSG genes
2. Pseudogenes cause the different VSG genes to have different activation frequencies, so you get more diversity in a population of trypanosoma

How can the diversity of VSG genes be maintained?

1. Gene conversions: the non-functional gene is placed back into the VSG array
2. Transcriptional switch: you only switch the site where the genes are being expressed, however, selection pressure
3. Telomere exchange: this can occur on the minichromosomes where there are nog VSG genes and which is an important place to store VSG genes. There is little selection pressiure

How can you have multiple expression sites but only 1 is being expressed?

1. By storing them as pseudogenes
2. Most silent VSG genes are inverted so you dont read them in the same direction
3. Boundary elements are in between housekeeping genes and VSG genes, they stop expression

Why are many genes located on telomeres?

There is a lot of recombination there so a good place to generate diversity

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