Seminar Abstract: Trypanosomatida parasites cause three Neglected Tropical Diseases; Sleeping Sickness, Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, which affect millions of people each year. In addition to Sleeping Sickness, Trypanosoma brucei also causes the wasting disease Nagana in cattle.

These parasites are spread between mammals by biting insects and must undergo various life cycle transitions as they navigate and adapt to the different environments within the mammalian hosts and insect vectors.

Using single cell transcriptomics, we have resolved the life cycle transition of Trypanosoma brucei as the parasites adapt for transmission from the mammal to the tsetse fly vector. Applying these methods to parasites isolated from both mouse models and cattle infections has further allowed comparisons of parasites while they infect different hosts or are cultured in vitro. Furthermore, we have now applied single cell transcriptomics to the leishmania life cycle and cell cycle.

Together this work has begun resolving the dynamic relationship between the cell cycle and life cycle of these important pathogens.

Biosketch: For more info about Emma, please visit herorcid ID page Emma Briggs (0000-0002-6740-8882) - ORCID