How insects fight infections: Kill as much as you can first, AMPs take care of the rest

Posted by: Kasra Hassani

Recently antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have received a lot of attention due to their ubiquitous presence in defence systems along with diversity of structure and function and of course putative commercial and therapeutics usages. Organisms as diverse as bacteria, fungi, insects and vertebrates possess a ‘personalized’ set of AMPs that fight invaders with low or no effect on hosts; interestingly, AMPs seems to be highly tolerant to emergence of resistance.

A study in Science by Haine et al. has suggested that insects use a two step mechanism in fighting infections. Firstly, up to 99.5% of the bacteria are killed by the phagocytic haematocytes and other immune mechanisms of the insects within the first few hours. Secondly and interestingly, the remaining low percentage which have been selected due resistance to the first immune response are ‘mopped up’ by a load of AMPs secreted from the host for the following days (up to two weeks). Because different AMPs with different properties and functions (pore forming, modulatory, inhibitory…) are secreted at the same time, very low chances for emergence of resistance remains for the surviving bacteria. The authors have highlighted that when thinking of AMPs for therapeutic purposes, their exact ecological role in nature has to be kept in mind.

Picture from Schneider and Chambers, Science 2008

Leishmania-induced IRAK-1 inactivation via host SHP-1 activation

Posted by Issa Abu-Dayyeh

I will hereby post the author summary of my most recent publication regarding modulation of macrophage signaling by the Leishmania parasite. The paper has been published on the 23rd of December 2008 in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Neglected Tropical Diseases, and demonstrates for the first time the ability of Leishmania to inactivate IRAK-1 through its ability to activate host PTP-SHP-1.

Citation: Abu-Dayyeh I, Shio MT, Sato S, Akira S, Cousineau B, et al. (2008) Leishmania-Induced IRAK-1 Inactivation Is Mediated by SHP-1 Interacting with an Evolutionarily Conserved KTIM Motif. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2(12): e305. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000305

Here is the author summary of the paper:

Leishmania developed several methods to seize control of macrophage signalling pathways in an effort to inactivate their killing abilities. One effective method utilized by the parasite is the activation of host protein tyrosine phosphatases, specifically SHP-1. This increased phosphatase activity contributes to the inactivation of signalling molecules involved in critical macrophage functions such as NO and cytokine production. Interestingly, the absence of SHP-1 results in stronger macrophage inflammatory responses to a bacterial cell wall component known as LPS, a molecule detected by macrophages through Toll-like receptors (TLRs). This observation suggested a role for SHP-1 in the regulation of TLR signalling. Our study reveals that upon Leishmania infection, SHP-1 is able to rapidly bind to and inactivate a critical kinase (IRAK-1) in this pathway. This regulatory binding was shown to be mediated by an evolutionarily conserved motif identified in the kinase. This motif was also present in other kinases involved in Toll signalling and therefore could represent a regulatory mechanism of relevance to many kinases. This work not only reports a unique mechanism by which Leishmania can avoid harmful TLR signalling, but also provides a platform on which extensive investigation on host evasion mechanisms and regulation of cellular kinases can be gained.

For further information please check the citation below to read the whole paper. PLoS is an open-access journal and therefore offers free access to its contents to anybody anywhere in the world!

P.S.: Abstract translations are also available in the following languages: Arabic, French, Spanish, and Farsi.

Dawkin’s “extended phenotype”, an extension or a revolution?

Posted by: Issa Abu-Dayyeh

The extended phenotype, a relatively longer and a more difficult reading than Dawkin’s “The selfish gene”, is in my opinion a book worth the reading effort for several reasons:

1-Although a big portion of the book was dedicated to rebuttal critics that showered Dawkins with accusations of being a genetic determinist and a reductionist (Based on his views in the Selfish gene), Dawkin’s replies to those criticisms are pretty logical and organised. In fact, Dawkins almost did not have to retract any of the claims he made 6 years before “the extended phenotype” was written.

2-The rest of the book sets to establish a new vision on the extent to which a gene can act.

Many of us would agree that an organisms’ behaviour is selected to maximize the success of the replication of the genes residing inside this organism. As tempting as this statement might be, this vision definitely pictures the body as the gene’s prison. It is the boundary, the wall,the farthest limit upon which a gene can act.

Dawkins suggests in “the extended phenotype” that the action of genes goes way beyond their ability to produce proteins for the bodies they reside in. In fact, genes can have effects on inaminate objects (such as the type of house an animal would build) or on other living beings. An example given by Dawkins is a trematode that lives in snails. This trematode codes for proteins that drive the snail to produce thicker shells than ususal. This provides greater protection for the trematode while diverting the snail’s energy from practices that could benefit the snail but not the trematode such as: reproduction. The author goes on and on giving examples of how genes can act at a distance!

But how influential is this extended phenotype argument? After reading the book, my initial thought was that it is really no revolution! This is simply an extension of our vision of how far genes should be seen to go. On a deeper thought, I believe this book is revolutionary from a different perspective. First, it places more emphasis on the interactions of genes (regardless of the organism that carries them) on the overall evolution of complex traits and the natural selection they undergo. The principle also explains how a parasite can alter the host’s behaviour to its advantage (therefore suggesting what was formerly thought as mal-adaptation of a host gene as good adaptation of the parasite gene), and how some parasites can end up as symbionts and ultimately interested in increasing the reproductive success of the host and, soon, very difficult to even be seen as  parasites (ex: the mitochondria and chloroplast endosymbiont theory).

This book simply modifies a vision: from behaviour maximizing the success of the genes inside the organism to behaviour maximizing the success of genes that code for that specific behaviour, no matter in whose body those genes are found. This definition reorganizes the genetic vision in a way highly compatible with dawkins’ selfish gene view of evolution and natural selection. Is he right about the extended phenotype or is he wrong? I think most of us would agree it is a logical extension of what we perceive as a direct effect of a gene, but what really matters is that it is different… and a different view is sometimes what we need to reevaluate our current vision and devise new experiments to expand our knowledge. Not to mention the importance of such a vision on the mathematics of genetic contributions to phenotypes. In a nutshell, this is a book worth reading!

What happens during differentiation of Leishmania? From a metabolism point of view

Posted by Kasra Hassani

The differentiation of the promastigote Leishmania to the amastigote form is one of the most interesting and promising areas of study in Leishmania research. Researchers are interested to know what are the differences between these two life-stages, how do the parasites shift from one to the other and what happens during this transformation. Rosenzweig et al. have addressed these questions by proteomic comparison of Leishmania donovani’s proteome during its transformation from the promastigote to the amastigote form. Using a new labelling method called the iTRAQ, they have looked at the proteome of L. donovani after stimulation with low pH and high temperature within 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 24h and after 6 days. With their method they believe that they have been able to detect half of the parasite’s proteome. This study has shown key changes in the proteome content of L. donovani which corresponds with its metabolic needs in the phagolysosome.

The mid-gut of sandfly is a sugar-rich environment because of its nectar-diet supplemented with occasional bloodmeals. However, sugars are scarce in the phagolysosome and the parasite has to switch to fatty acids and amino acids as energy sources. According to Rosenzweig et al., starting from 10h after stimulation, glycolysis enzymes are down-regulated while enzymes required for beta-oxidation, gluconeogenesis, amino acid catabolism, TCA cycle and mitochondrial respiration are up-regulated. Furthermore, protein translation and thus metabolism slows down which corresponds to parasite’s smaller size and slower growth. In this way the parasite retools its metabolism to be able to live and multiply inside the phagolysosome. Another interesting and rather surprising finding of Rosenzweig et al. is that most of these alterations in metabolism start rather late (after 10-15h) and they take hours to maturate. This finding, raises the question that how do incompletely differentiated parasites reside in the same host environment as the mature amastigotes?

Model for parasitism: invasive/evase vs. pathoantigenic molecules

Posted by Kasra Hassani

A very interesting conceptual model for parasitic virulence was proposed by Chang et al. (2003) a few years ago and has been recently discussed in Leishmania and Leishmaniasis by Banuls et al. (2007). It has long been established that parasitic organisms, bacteria, protozoa, helminths etc. benefit from certain molecules that enable them establish infection within the host and cause pathogenicity. It can be said that the parasites are at the same time ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ to the host.

Here I briefly introduce the model with Leishmania as the model organism. The idea is to define twp groups of effective molecules named invasive/evasive and pathoantigenic. The invasive/evasive molecules help the parasite to evade from the innate immune system and its microbicidal mechanisms to establish its infection. These molecules usually stay ‘invisible’ to the immune system and their expression might end after the establishment of infection. Good examples in the case for Leishmania are gp63 surface protease and the surface molecule lypophosphoglycan (LPG). Both of these molecules have crucial roles in evasion from the complement system, facilitation of phagocytosis and subversion of macrophage signalling to the parasite’s benefit. Their expression is slowed down and LPG is almost totally absent in Leishmania amastigotes. As expected, they also do not elicit an immune response.

On the other hand, another rank of molecules, which are generally intracellular in Leishmania are pathoantigenic and cause immunopathologic responses. Interestingly, the majority of Leishmania’s immunogenic proteins are intracellular rather surface proteins and are being produced as a result of parasite’s multiplication within the host. They are believed to be exposed to the immune system during cytolysis and cause the virulence phenotype. A proper example is the amastigote-specific protein A2 which is an intracellular protein and is highly immunogenic. This protein being expressed in high levels in visceral species induces visceralization of Leishmaniasis.

Chang et al. have discussed their model extensively with Leishmania infection but have described how it could beautifully fit with other types of acute and chronic diseases. For instance in schistosomiasis, the adult worm stays in the blood vessel ‘invisible’ to the immune system while releaseing highly antigenic eggs that cause immunopathology. This model can present convergent evolution of parasitic strategies in very divergent parasites.

Perhaps each parasitologist could at least conceptually fit and expand this model for their own parasite of interest to have a better overall understanding of its parasitic strategies.

Parasites lead to evolution of robustness against gene loss in host signaling networks

Posted by Hamed Shateri Najafabadi

A new study by Marcel Salathé and Orkun Soyer reveals exciting evolutionary consequences of host-parasite interactions on the architecture of biological networks of the host. Their paper, which was published a few days ago in Molecular Systems Biology, is one of those that you read and wonder why no one had thought of it before! The approach that they use is elegant and the findings are very significant.

Marcel is now a postdoc fellow at Stanford and very soon is going to start working on “questions about the non-genetic (e.g. cultural) effects on disease dynamics” (I got it from his web page). I asked him to write a synopsis of his paper for The Parasite Diary, and here it is:

“Many molecular pathways are robust against removal of parts, but why such robustness is evolutionary maintained is a question that has not been answered yet. Another, seemingly unrelated finding in recent years is the process by which parasites attack their hosts and evade an immune response from the host. Evidence is accumulating that the most frequent evasion strategy of parasites is to interfere with the protein machinery of hosts, for example by suppressing important genes that are necessary to recognize a parasite and/or mount an immune response – we cite various key papers in the study.
Our idea was to bring these two observations together: if parasites interfere with host pathways, they create selective pressure on the host to avoid such interference. One obvious solution to this problem is that hosts would evolve pathways that are robust to the suppression of a protein – if a parasite suppresses the protein, the host would still be able to respond in the appropriate fashion. We believe that part of what we see in knockout studies – which are usually performed in the lab in the absence of parasites – could be explained by this phenomenon.
To see whether our idea made sense we used a mathematical model of pathway dynamics and ran evolutionary simulations in the computer. Our findings confirmed that our proposal is plausible, and in principle it is also testable. The evolved robustness resulted either from redundancy or from specific network architecture, and was more stable when it resulted from the latter; robustness based on redundancy alone was quickly lost under subsequent stabilizing evolution (without parasite interference).
Altogether, we hope that this type of research invites biologists to look closer at the ecological aspects of systems biology properties.
Parasites are an extremely strong and continuous source of selection on any species (with maybe the notable exception of viruses), and such strong selection pressures should not be ignored when we try to understand evolutionary processes.”

Thank you Marcel for your enjoyable paper. We are looking forward to your future works.

Altruism in Leishmania: apoptotic parasites are required for infectivity of metacyclic promastigotes

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.