HOP1 and HAP2 are conserved components of the meiosis-related machinery required for successful mating in Leishmania

Carolina Moura Costa Catta-Preta, Tiago Rodrigues Ferreira, Kashinath Ghosh, Andrea Paun and David Sacks ()
Additional contact information
Carolina Moura Costa Catta-Preta: National Institutes of Health
Tiago Rodrigues Ferreira: National Institutes of Health
Kashinath Ghosh: National Institutes of Health
Andrea Paun: National Institutes of Health
David Sacks: National Institutes of Health

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Whole genome analysis of Leishmania hybrids generated experimentally in sand flies supports a meiotic mechanism of genetic exchange, with Mendelian segregation of the nuclear genome. Here, we perform functional analyses through the generation of double drug-resistant hybrids in vitro and in vivo (during sand fly infections) to assess the importance of conserved meiosis-related genes in recombination and plasmogamy. We report that HOP1 and a HAP2-paralog (HAP2-2) are essential components of the Leishmania meiosis machinery and cell-to-cell fusion mechanism, respectively, since deletion of either gene in one or both parents significantly reduces or completely abrogates mating competence. These findings significantly advance our understanding of sexual reproduction in Leishmania, with likely relevance to other trypanosomatids, by formally demonstrating the involvement of a meiotic protein homolog and a distinct fusogen that mediates non-canonical, bilateral fusion in the hybridizing cells.

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42789-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-42789-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42789-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().