TIBA student wins British Society of Parasitology poster prize

Kevin is the TIBA Partnership student on the Wellcome Trust 4-year PhD programme in Hosts, Pathogens and Global Health, working with Professor Keith Matthews in the School of Biological Sciences.

African trypanosomes are extracellular parasites transmitted by tsetse flies that cause sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in animals.

Key species in sub-Saharan Africa include T. brucei, T. congolense and T. vivax. They alternate between mammalian and tsetse fly hosts, adjusting their energy requirements and gene expression patterns to adapt to these different environments.

T. brucei has two distinct bloodstream forms - slender and stumpy - with slender forms dividing and increasing parasite numbers in the blood, while stumpy forms do not divide, are responsible for transmission, and survive the harsh conditions in the tsetse midgut to continue the life cycle.

In contrast, T. congolense lacks a morphologically stumpy form, yet still develops into the next stage in the tsetse midgut to continue its life cycle.

Despite the lack of obvious morphological changes in T. congolense, Kevin's work sought to understand whether T. congolense nevertheless undergoes transmission-specific developmental adaptation in mammals.  

Using single-cell RNA sequencing, he has identified distinct subpopulations of T. congolense in mice that show enrichment of specific gene expression signatures. The results have provided a basis for identifying potential developmental markers and testing whether T. congolense undergoes transmission-specific developmental adaptation in mammals.

Ongoing work to track the expression pattern of candidate markers in vivo, will shed light on the developmental programme of T. congolense in mammals and in the tsetse fly vector. 

Hosts, Pathogens and Global Health PhD programme

Matthews Lab

TIBA Partnership (Tackling Infection to Benefit Africa)

School of Biological Sciences

British Society of Parasitology

Microbiology Society