Posted by Kasra Hassani
Suppression of the innate immune response and inhibition of activation of phagocytes that would otherwise kill the parasites has long been established as mechanisms of immune evasion and persistence among Leishmania parasites.
In their paper, van Zandbergen et al. have indicated presence of a high ratio (more than 40%) of apoptotic cells in the metacyclic/stationary phage parasites. They have characterized these cells by occurrence of phosphatidyl serine (PS) in the outer leaflet of plasma membrane as well as PS-binding protein Anexin A5(AnxA5). The majority of AnxA5+ cells have been shown to be apoptotic and different in morphology to infective parasites and they have shown that depletion of these apoptotic cells from the infective population substantially abrogates infectivity.
Apoptotic cells induce production of TGF-beta and IL-10 which are anti-inflammatory cytokines; these cytokines are produced as well by neutrophils when they phagocyte apoptotic Leishmania. Apoptotic parasites also hamper secretion of TNF-alpha, all of which results in inactivation of neutrophils and later macrophages and their inability to kill the phagocytosed parasites.
This is an interesting example of altruism among single-cell populations; the authors have suggested that apoptosis is probably triggered in late log phase and stationary phase promastigotes in the sandfly midgut due to nutrient depletion prior to their entry into the mammalian host.
Posted by Kasra Hassani
In this paper, Silverman et al. have pointed to two interesting subjects: first, what proteins are generally secreted from Leishmania, and second, how are these proteins secreted. In an extensive proteomic analysis, they have pointed out 151 proteins that they believe are being actively secreted out of stationary promastigotes of Leishmania donovani. These proteins belong to a wide variety of groups, such as proteases, antioxidants, nucleases etc. and each might play roles in survival of the parasite within its hosts and modulation of the immune response. Identification of these proteins opens up many opportunities for further studies that promote understanding their function and possible therapeutic targets in continuing studies.
Another interesting finding of Silverman et al. was that among these secreted proteins only 2 contain a classical amino-terminal secretion signal, which means that Leishmania largely might benefit from non-classical secretion pathways such as exosomes. Exosomes have been studied previously in human B cells and dendritic cells and it is actually interesting to point out that there is striking correspondence between the proteome content of these exosomes and Leishmania’s secretome (except for the proteins for which Leishmania does not have an ortholog). The authors have proposed the release of exosomes from the surface of the cell and especially from the flagellar pocket to be an important pathway of protein secretion by Leishmania and they have observed vesicular budding from the parasite surface by STM.
