Identificación de proteínas reguladoras de la expresión génica en tripanosomátidos

Trypanosomatids are parasites that cause pathologies with renowned impact on public health such as Chagas disease, the sleeping sickness, and leishmaniasis. These eukaryotes are characterized by having diverged early from their evolutionary path developing regulatory mechanisms that are efficient and finely orchestrated. Mechanisms which have ensured their transmission by allowing their adaptation to inhospitable and disparate environments such as those encountered in their invertebrate and mammal hosts. As a consequence of their peculiar genome organization, trypanosomatids have opted for regulating their gene expression mainly through post-transcriptional mechanisms, which are mediated through the action of RNA-binding proteins (RBP). These proteins recognize trypanosomatids target messengers due to the presence of cis elements and they link to the corresponding RNA forming ribonucleoprotein complexes. Thus, cells establish regulatory networks where a single RBP can act over hundreds of RNA messengers, and the destiny of any given RNA is dictated by the combination of the RBP with which it interacts. Around 100 RNA-binding proteins have been predicted by bioinformatics tools in trypanosomatids, but few of them have been characterized and there is no doubt that many are to be discovered still. In this article, we present the strategies used for the identification and characterization of gene-expression regulatory proteins in trypanosomatids over the past decade in our research group, particularly of RBPs directly implicated in the post-transcriptional regulation of the HSP70 genes of Leishmania braziliensis.