Transcriptomes of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense from sleeping sickness patients, rodents and culture: Effects of strain, growth conditions and RNA preparation methods

摘要

African trypanosomes cause sleeping sickness in humans and various diseases of domestic and wild animals. Until now, all of our current knowledge of African trypanosome metabolism is based on results from trypanosomes grown in in vitro culture or in rodents. Drugs against sleeping sickness must however treat trypanosomes in humans. We here examine the way in which genes are expressed in human sleeping sickness trypanosomes from the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of human patients, and compare our results with those from trypanosomes growing in culture and rodents. Gene expression profiles of trypanosomes from human blood and cerebrospinal fluid were quite similar and there was no evidence for differences that might affect drug susceptibility. The RNAs in laboratory-adapted parasites grown in in vitro culture also quite closely resembled those in parasites from humans. The results showed that technical differences in the way RNA is made can have strong effects on measured gene expression profiles.