Characterization of the <i>A2–A2rel</i> gene cluster in <i>Leishmania donovani</i>: involvement of A2 in visceralization during infection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The A2 gene family is present in Leishmania donovani, which causes fatal visceral leishmaniasis in human patients, but is not present in Leishmania major, which causes cutaneous leishmaniasis infections. The A2 genes in L. donovani are stage specific and are expressed at high levels in the amastigote stage in the mammalian host, but are not expressed in the promastigote stage in the insect sandfly vector. The A2 genes are tandem repeated with a distinct gene family termed the A2rel genes. In order to characterize the structure and function of the A2-A2rel gene clusters, the 5' and 3' DNA sequences flanking the A2-A2rel cluster were isolated, sequenced and used to generate mutants through gene targeting. Although it was possible to generate partial A2-A2rel gene clusters knock-out mutants, it was not possible to delete all the A2-A2rel gene clusters completely from the L. donovani genome, suggesting that, within this cluster, there are genes that are essential for survival in culture. Characterization of these mutants revealed that A2 and A2rel gene expression was compensated by amplifying the remaining intact A2 and A2rel genes, and the proliferation of these mutants in culture and their virulence in BALB/c mice were compromised. In order to explore further the biological role of A2, the L. donovani A2 gene was introduced into L. major. In comparison with the control L. major, the A2-expressing L. major parasites demonstrated an increased ability to survive in the spleen of BALB/c mice. These data suggest that A2 plays a role in the visceralization of infection associated with L. donovani.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".