Screening ciliopathy genes in the model organism Trypanosoma brucei

摘要

We have carried out a bioinformatics study to search fornovel proteins of the flagellum/cilium. A total of 26 candidatehypothetical genes were established from previouslypublished studies including a flagellar proteome [1] and anRNAi study of motility mutants of Trypanosoma brucei[2]. All candidates are predicted to have orthologues in thehuman genome, the dysregulation of which is associatedwith or predicted to be involved in at least one ciliopathy.The protozoan parasite T. brucei is a well establishedexperimental model to study defects in flagellum assemblyand function. In this project we will confirm that the proteinsfrom the candidate genes are localised to the flagellumor basal body by GFP-tagging. The function of eachwill be assessed using inducible RNAi methods and infuture work will involve taking the work forward intohuman cell lines for some candidate genes to see if we canreproduce the same phenotype in the cilia of human cells.