Seminar | ANDREIA ALBUQUERQUE WENDT

Protozoa are single celled eukaryotes which can be free-living or parasitic. My PhD focused on the Glycobiology of the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii and currently I am identifying transporters proteins important for Leishmania macrophage infection.

The Plasmodium closely related T. gondii causes toxoplasmosis and is estimated to infects 1 in 3 individuals worldwide. Due to its facilitated laboratory culture, access to genetic manipulation tools and established characterization protocols, T. gondii is commonly used as a model for the study of other apicomplexans.

Leishmania sp. cause a broad range of diseases known as leishmaniases, affecting over 1 million people worldwide. Thanks to the recently developed CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools in this parasite, it is now possible to perform high throughput knock-outs and investigate the function of multiple genes within weeks. Using this state-of-the-art technique, I am targeting the transportome of Leishmania mexicana and hoping to shed some light both in terms of virulence as well as drug resistance mechanisms of these parasites.

In this talk, along with my academic path, I will give a few insights on how I genetically manipulated Toxoplasma, investigated the importance of a glycosyltransferase and how that influenced the biology and infection mechanism of this parasite. In addition, I will give a brief introduction to the CRISPR/Cas9 system currently in use by our laboratory and how I will use it to identify the transportome of Leishmania parasites.