PuSH - Publication Server of Helmholtz Zentrum München: Genomic determinants of antigen expression hierarchy in African trypanosomes.

Information

Clues to quality of journals

Open Access Policy of Helmholtz Association 2016

CC Licencences

Publication Metrics

Navigation

Home

Deutsch

EVA: Electronic Publishing

New EVA Application

Research

Advanced Search

Browse by ...

... HMGU-Authors/Consortia

... Organizational Structure

... Journal

... Publication Type

... Research Data

... Arbeitsgruppen

... Publication Year

Publication overview

Statistics

Statistics (last 5 years)

OA Publications

Publish

Submit Publication

Import publication from...

...EVA

Report missing publication

Highlights

Support & Contact

Contact persons

Help

Data protection

Helmholtz Open Science

JANE Journal Estimator

SHERPA/RoMEO

DOAJ

Export:

Text

Endnote (RIS) BIB

BibTeX

Keneskhanova, Z.* ; McWilliam, K.R.* ; Cosentino, R.O.* ; Barcons-Simon, A.* ; Dobrynin, A. ; Smith, J.E.* ; Subota, I.* ; Mugnier, M.R.* ; Colomé-Tatché, M. ; Siegel, T.N.*

Genomic determinants of antigen expression hierarchy in African trypanosomes.

Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08720-w (2025)

Publ. Version/Full Text

Research data

DOI

PMC

	Open Access Hybrid

Abstract
Metrics
Extra information

Antigenic variation is an immune evasion strategy used by many different pathogens. It involves the periodic, non-random switch in the expression of different antigens throughout an infection. How the observed hierarchy in antigen expression is achieved has remained a mystery^1,2. A key challenge in uncovering this process has been the inability to track transcriptome changes and potential genomic rearrangements in individual cells during a switch event. Here we report the establishment of a highly sensitive single-cell RNA sequencing approach for the model protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei. This approach has revealed genomic rearrangements that occur in individual cells during a switch event. Our data show that following a double-strand break in the transcribed antigen-coding gene-an important trigger for antigen switching-the type of repair mechanism and the resultant antigen expression depend on the availability of a homologous repair template in the genome. When such a template was available, repair proceeded through segmental gene conversion, creating new, mosaic antigen-coding genes. Conversely, in the absence of a suitable template, a telomere-adjacent antigen-coding gene from a different part of the genome was activated by break-induced replication. Our results show the critical role of repair sequence availability in the antigen selection mechanism. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the power of highly sensitive single-cell RNA sequencing methods in detecting genomic rearrangements that drive transcriptional changes at the single-cell level.

Impact Factor

Scopus SNIP

Altmetric

48.500

0.000