Wellcome award for Leishmania research
Published: 18 February 2021
Dr Eva Gluenz, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute's Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology (WCIP) has secured a £2.3million Wellcome Collaborative Award for Leishmania research.
Dr Eva Gluenz, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute's Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology (WCIP) has secured a £2.3million Wellcome Collaborative Award for Leishmania research.
The genome sequence of Leishmania parasites was first decoded 15 years ago but many unanswered questions remain, such as those surrounding the genres that are vital for infectivity, what their specific functions are, how they help the parasite go though its life cycle, infect sand flies and mammals, and persist in mammalian macrophages.
Using the award, lead researcher Dr Gluenz will work with colleagues from the University of York, Oxford Brookes University and the University of Oxford to define the molecular determinants required for Leishmania life cycle progression and virulence.
Over the next five years, the Gluenz Lab will use CRISPR genome modification tools to generate 9000 Leishmania gene deletion mutants and, with Jeremy Mottram’s group (York), study them in vitro and in vivo to determine which genes are important for causing disease.
Jack Sunter’s group (Oxford Brookes) will tag 3000 proteins with a fluorescent marker and to work out where in the cell these proteins are found, helping to define their function.
This positional and functional information from experiments will be combined with integrative data analysis led by Richard Wheeler (University of Oxford) to uncover the most important pathways for parasite infectivity.
First published: 18 February 2021