Grant: Project Grant

Trypanosomatid species are parasitic unicellular organisms with insect and human infective life cycle stages that cause diseases in humans and livestock. They include the causal agents of human African sleeping sickness, Chagas' disease, and Leishmaniases (Trypanosoma brucei group, T. cruzi, and Leishmania species, respectively). Together they affect 20 million individuals worldwide including the industrialized world due to immigration and returning soldiers from the endemic areas. Most available drugs are increasingly ineffective, and new drugs are needed. Although the genome sequences of the most prominent trypanosomatid pathogens are available, more than half of their genes have no known function. This limitation has slowed the progress in drug discovery for these pathogens. This project proposes to expand the knowledge about the function of genes and their cellular roles in major trypanosomatid pathogens including conserved genes and pathways that are potentially responsible for survival and disease using our established experimental and computational approaches. This project will provide the first global view of protein functions in trypanosomatids, and will significantly advance our knowledge of the biology of these parasites and ability to predict new routes of disease intervention.