RNA-seq transcriptional profiling of Leishmania amazonensis reveals an arginase dependent gene expression regulation

Leishmania is a protozoan parasite that alternates its life cycle between the sand fly vector and the mammalian host. This alternation involves environmental changes and submits the parasite to dynamic modifications in morphology, metabolism, cellular signaling and gene expression regulation to allow a rapid adaptation to new conditions. Our research group have been studying the role of arginase in L. amazonensis during the parasite life cycle and its role in the establishment and maintenance of the infection in mammalian macrophages. Arginase is an imunoregulatory enzyme, which can reduce the nitric oxide concentrations produced by activated macrophages and limit the availability of L-arginine, regulating the polyamines pathway, supporting the resistance of some pathogens to host defense mechanisms. In this work, we performed transcriptional profiling to identify differentially expressed genes from promastigotes and axenic amastigotes of L. amazonensis wild type (La WT) and arginase knockout (La arg-).