The protozoan parasite Cryptosporidium parvum, one of the causative agents of human cryptosporidiosis, belongs to the Coccidia subgroup in the phylum apicomplexa and brings about waterborne illnesses throughout the world [1,2]. Cryptosporidium oocysts can endure widespread drinking water remedy procedures, which include chlorination, and significant outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis induced by contamination of drinking water have been reported [3,4]. Despite the fact that in healthy adults Cryptosporidium infection final results in self constrained diarrhea, an outbreak in 1993 in Milwaukee, WI affected an estimated four hundred,000 people [5]. Furthermore, as an opportunistic infection it can be lethal in934369-14-9 immunocompromised persons, these as folks contaminated with HIV, specially individuals with no accessibility to very energetic antiretroviral remedy [six]. Irrespective of the world-wide spread of the parasite, therapeutic alternatives for successful treatment of C. parvum an infection are confined [7]. Quite several potential drug targets are recognized, due to the fact metabolic pathways and regulatory molecules that are critical to the survival of the parasite are mainly uncharacterized [8]. Thus, increasing our understanding of big biochemical pathways that are identified to be significant in protozoa, these kinds of as glycolysis, is of appreciable interest [nine,ten].
Early scientific tests suggested that C. parvum depends greatly on glycolysis for electricity [11,12]. All of the enzymes in the glycolytic pathway had been identified in the cytoplasmic portion of the oocysts [12]. Subsequently, genome sequencing uncovered genes encoding all glycolytic enzymes, but genes encoding the Krebs cycle enzymes and the components of the mitochondrial complexes I to IV have been lacking. The deficiency of practical mitochondria additional underscores the reliance of the organism on glycolysis [thirteen]. Nevertheless, biochemical and structural scientific studies of glycolytic enzymes of C. parvum are very constrained. In contrast, the glycolytic pathway has been studied in substantial detail in trypanosomatid parasites [10,fourteen], and two enzymes in unique, glyceraldehyde 3phosphate dehydrogenase and pyruvate kinase (PyK), have been targeted for developing antitrypanosomal medicine [fifteen,16]. Much more lately, PyK has been shown to be an successful concentrate on for antibacterial brokers in opposition to methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus [17,18]. There are some noteworthy differences among PyKs from different species. In mammals four PyK isozymes are expressed, but Trypanosomes encode only one, [19,20,21]. In at the very least two users of apicomplexa, Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum, a second PyK localized in the apicoplast has been identified in addition to the cytoplasmic sort [22,23]. Nevertheless, only the cytoplasmic sort has been identified in C. parvum (http:// cryptodb.org/cryptodb/). A hallmark of PyK is the allosteric regulation of its exercise by various phosphorylated sugars [24]. PyKs from different organisms use different effector molecules for regulation. For instance, mammalian enzymes are strongly regulated by fructose 1, 6bisphosphate (F-1,six BP), but trypanosomal PyK remains comparatively unaffected by F-one,six BP and is activated by submicromolar concentrations of fructose two, 6-bisphosphate (F-2,six BP) [twenty]. Cytoplasmic PyK of T. gondii is activated by glucose 6phosphate and F-one,6 BP [11,twenty five]. Notably, C. parvum PyK (CpPyK) is extraordinary, as it showed no allosteric house [eleven]. Phosphosugars, which include glucose one-phosphate, glucose 6phosphate, fructose 6-phosphate, 8425191ribose 5-phosphate, F-1,6 BP and F-2,6BP, had no effect on the enzyme activity [eleven]. The only other known PyK that lacks allosteric activity is the mammalian muscle isozyme M1 [26]. Three-dimensional structures of PyK from mammalian, bacterial and parasitic organisms have been reported [twenty,24,27,28,29]. Among the parasitic proteins, L. mexicana pyruvate kinase (LmPyK) is the most totally analyzed (13 out of 18 entries in the protein info financial institution), and structural implications of binding substrates and allosteric regulators have been proven from a collection of crystal constructions [20,28,30]. Crystal structures of PyK from 3 other parasites, T. gondii, Trypanosoma cruzi and P. falciparum (PDBID: 3KHD unpublished) have also been described [25,31].
