The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame is pleased to present a seminar by Miguel Morales, assistant professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame. The talk, "Signal transduction pathways in Leishmania," will take place at 4pm on Tuesday, November 12 in 283 Galvin Life Science.
Protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania are responsible for important neglected diseases in humans and animals, ranging from self-healing cutaneous lesions to fatal visceral manifestations. During the infectious cycle, Leishmania is exposed to various environmental stress signals in insect and mammalian hosts, which trigger parasite development into the virulent metacyclic and pathogenic amastigote life cycle stages. Extracellular signals are translated into stage-specific gene expression by reversible protein phosphorylation that is controlled by a network of protein kinases and phosphatases. Despite the importance of environmental sensing in transmission, intracellular infection and differentiation our understanding on mechanisms underlying these processes remains very poor.
Originally published at biology.nd.edu.