Abstract

RUBIANO, Claudia Consuelo  and  WASSERMAN, Moisés. Identificación de la secuencia del gen de la subunidad catalítica de la telomerasa en Plasmodium falciparum. Biomédica [online]. 2005, vol.25, n.1, pp.87-100. ISSN 0120-4157.

Identification of the gene sequence of telomerase catalitic subunit in Plasmodium falciparum. Introduction: The enzyme telomerase participates in the regulation of telomere length synthesizing new telomeric repeats to compensate the loss in each DNA replication cycle. Thus, telomerase is a possible target to stop the growth of cells with high replication rates. This is the case of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes the most severe kind of human malaria. It is known that it has telomerase activity but the information on the enzyme is very poor. Methods: In order to approach to the study of telomerase in P. falciparum, a multiple alignment was done using telomerase catalytic subunit sequences found in data bases. A consensus sequence was obtained, and it was compared with the sequences in the P. falciparum genome project and as a result, a sequence that could be part of the telomerase gene was found. To test that, a set of primers was designed and used to perform amplifications over DNA and RNA. Results: DNA fragments corresponding to telomerase conserved domains were amplified and by using reverse transcription and PCR over the cDNA, the presence of mRNA was detected. In this way, using bioinformatics tools and testing them with molecular biology techniques, the sequence of telomerase catalytic subunit gene (TERT) in P. falciparum was obtained and its presence and transcription were demonstrated.

Keywords : Telomerase; telomere; Plasmodium falciparum; bioinformatic; malaria.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )