title: A touch of Zen: post-translational regulation of the Leishmania stress response.
abstract: Across bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic kingdoms, heat shock proteins (HSPs) are defined as a class of highly conserved chaperone proteins that are rapidly induced in response to temperature increase through dedicated heat shock transcription factors. While this transcriptional response governs cellular adaptation of fungal, plant and animal cells to thermic shock and other forms of stress, early-branching eukaryotes of the kinetoplastid order, including trypanosomatid parasites, lack classical mechanisms of transcriptional regulation and show largely constitutive expression of HSPs, thus raising important questions on the function of HSPs in the absence of stress and the regulation of their chaperone activity in response to environmental adversity. Understanding parasite-specific mechanisms of stress-response regulation is especially relevant for protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania that are adapted for survival inside highly toxic phagolysosomes of host macrophages causing the various immuno-pathologies of leishmaniasis. Here we review recent advances on the function and regulation of chaperone activities in these kinetoplastid pathogens and propose a new model for stress-response regulation through a reciprocal regulatory relationship between stress kinases and chaperones that may be relevant for parasite-adaptive differentiation and infectivity.
authors: Institut Pasteur and Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U1210, Unité de Parasitologie Moléculaire et Signalisation, 25 rue du Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, France.
authors: Gerald F
authors: GF
authors: Späth
authors: Sima
authors: S
authors: Drini
authors: Najma
authors: N
authors: Rachidi
mesh_terms: D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D007891:Leishmania / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D018832:Molecular Chaperones / Q000378:metabolism*; D011499:Protein Processing, Post-Translational; D013312:Stress, Physiological
chemical_list: D018832:Molecular Chaperones