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Molecular microbiology

A key event in survival

Nature volume 459, pages 172–173 (2009)Cite this article

The parasitic microorganism Trypanosoma brucei evades recognition by its host's immune system by repeatedly changing its surface coat. The switch in coat follows a risky route, though: DNA break and repair.

Like many other single-celled pathogens, the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness in humans, undergoes antigenic variation — that is, it periodically switches its variant surface glycoprotein (VSG), the molecule targeted by host antibodies. But how switching is triggered has remained largely elusive. On page 278 of this issue, Boothroyd et al.1 show that a DNA double-strand break (DSB) upstream of the T. brucei VSG gene is the likely primary event in this process. Their results add to the few, albeit crucial, cases in which DSBs trigger developmental processes: these include mating-type switching in yeast, rearrangements of immune-system genes in humans and meiotic cell division to produce sex germ cells2.

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Figure 1: Antigenic switching and sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dave Barry and Richard McCulloch are at the Wellcome Centre for Molecular Parasitology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8TA, UK. j.d.barry@bio.gla.ac.uk; rmc9z@udcf.gla.ac.uk ,

    Dave Barry & Richard McCulloch

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  1. Dave Barry
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  2. Richard McCulloch
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Barry, D., McCulloch, R. A key event in survival. Nature 459, 172–173 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459172a

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