The Journal of Experimental Medicine
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Published online 10 May 2004 doi:10.1084/jem.20030635
Rockefeller University Press, 0022-1007 $8.00
JEM, Volume 199, Number 10, 1445-1450
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Brief Definitive Report

 Surface Sialic Acids Taken from the Host Allow Trypanosome Survival in Tsetse Fly Vectors

Kisaburo Nagamune1, Alvaro Acosta-Serrano2, Haruki Uemura3, Reto Brun4, Christina Kunz-Renggli4, Yusuke Maeda1, Michael A.J. Ferguson2, and Taroh Kinoshita1

1 Department of Immunoregulation, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
2 Division of Molecular Microbiology and Biological Chemistry, Wellcome Trust Biocentre, The University of Dundee, DD1 5EH Dundee, Scotland, UK
3 Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki 852-8523, Japan
4 Swiss Tropical Institute, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland

Address correspondence to Taroh Kinoshita, Dept. of Immunoregulation, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, 3-1 Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. Phone: 81-6-6879-8328; Fax: 81-6-6875-5233; email: tkinoshi{at}biken.osaka-u.ac.jp

The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei, which causes sleeping sickness in humans and Nagana disease in livestock, is spread via blood-sucking Tsetse flies. In the fly's intestine, the trypanosomes survive digestive and trypanocidal environments, proliferate, and translocate into the salivary gland, where they become infectious to the next mammalian host. Here, we show that for successful survival in Tsetse flies, the trypanosomes use trans-sialidase to transfer sialic acids that they cannot synthesize from host's glycoconjugates to the glycosylphosphatidylinositols (GPIs), which are abundantly expressed on their surface. Trypanosomes lacking sialic acids due to a defective generation of GPI-anchored trans-sialidase could not survive in the intestine, but regained the ability to survive when sialylated by means of soluble trans-sialidase. Thus, surface sialic acids appear to protect the parasites from the digestive and trypanocidal environments in the midgut of Tsetse flies.

Key Words: Trypanosoma brucei • trypanosomiasis • glycosylphosphatidylinositol • trans-sialidase • GPI transamidase

The present address of A. Acosta-Serrano is Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology, Glasgow University, Glasgow G11 6NU, Scotland, UK.


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