Yeats domains: identification and characterization in L. mexicana

• Grant number: 21/04748-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Biochemistry - Biochemistry of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Nilmar Silvio Moretti
• Grantee: Miguel Antonio do Nascimento Garcia
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

More than a hundred post-translational modifications (PTMs) have already been described in several organisms, being fundamental pieces for the adaptation and cellular interaction in the face of environmental variations, playing fundamental roles in the regulation of different biological pathways. In 2011 a new type of post-translational modification of the acylations group was identified, crotonylation. Its structural group is crotonil, added to lysine residues and consisting of a rigid and flat structure of the C-C type making it unique within this group. Such PTM has already been identified in the N-terminal regions of histones acting in the regulation of gene transcription and it has also been demonstrated that its "readers'' control the virulence of some species of fungi. Recently, the presence of crotonylation in hundreds of proteins involved in various cellular processes of Trypanosoma brucei has been demonstrated. The regulation of crotonylation levels occurs through the action of crotonylases, which add crotonyl, decrotonylases, which remove this group and proteins containing YEATS domains, which are the readers of crotonylation and act recruiting other regulatory proteins. The YEATS domains vary between organisms, and there may be one or more of them, but not all organisms have their domains characterized in terms of their cell location and impacts on the regulation of cell pathways. This project aims to characterize such YEATS domains in the protozoan parasite Leishmania mexicana, which causes cutaneous leishmaniasis, and to evaluate their impacts on the differentiation of its evolutionary forms. (AU)