RESEARCH ARTICLE The Flagellar Arginine Kinase in Trypanosoma brucei Is Important for Infection in Tsetse Flies Cher-Pheng Ooi1¤, Brice Rotureau1, Simonetta Gribaldo2, Christina Georgikou1, Daria Julkowska1, Thierry Blisnick1, Sylvie Perrot1, Ines Subota1, Philippe Bastin1* 1 Trypanosome Cell Biology Unit, INSERM U1201, Institut Pasteur, 25 Rue du Docteur Roux, 75015, Paris, France, 2 Molecular Biology of Gene in Extremophiles Unit, Department of Microbiology, Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Docteur Roux, 75015, Paris, France ¤ Current address: Department of Life Sciences, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Imperial College-South Kensington, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom *
[email protected] Abstract OPEN ACCESS African trypanosomes are flagellated parasites that cause sleeping sickness. Parasites are Citation: Ooi C-P, Rotureau B, Gribaldo S, Georgikou C, Julkowska D, Blisnick T, et al. (2015) transmitted from one mammalian host to another by the bite of a tsetse fly. Trypanosoma The Flagellar Arginine Kinase in Trypanosoma brucei brucei possesses three different genes for arginine kinase (AK) including one (AK3) that Is Important for Infection in Tsetse Flies. PLoS ONE encodes a protein localised to the flagellum. AK3 is characterised by the presence of a 10(7): e0133676. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133676 unique amino-terminal insertion that specifies flagellar targeting. We show here a phyloge- Editor: Frank Voncken, University of Hull, UNITED netic analysis revealing that flagellar AK arose in two independent duplication events in KINGDOM T. brucei and T. congolense, the two species of African trypanosomes that infect the tsetse Received: April 11, 2015 midgut. In T. brucei, AK3 is detected in all stages of parasite development in the fly (in the Accepted: June 29, 2015 midgut and in the salivary glands) as well as in bloodstream cells, but with predominance at Published: July 28, 2015 insect stages.