Tripping Up Chagas

Chagas disease is a global health threat and neglected tropical disease. It’s a tropical parasite spread mostly by insects, and the molecular mechanisms by which the parasite infects human cells are poorly understood. Researchers probing this damaging infection examined thrombospondin-1 (TSP1), a protein in our cells that mediates cell-to-cell interactions and plays a role in many essential functions. They found that cells lacking this key protein (right, compared to normal cells, left) resisted infection by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (green). The team revealed that the parasite activates the β-catenin signalling pathway, a molecular sequence of events crucial in species across the animal kingdom for everything from cell growth to movement. Their results suggest that during early infection, TSP1 enables some of this activity, and that overall the β-catenin pathway is a potential target for treatments or prevention tactics.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image adapted from work by Ashutosh Arun and colleagues
• Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Physiology, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, January 2022