Luis Miguel de Pablos

University of Granada | UGR · Department of Parasitology

Trypanosoma cruzi has a complex life cycle comprising pools of cell populations which circulate among humans, vectors, sylvatic reservoirs and domestic animals. Recent experimental evidence has demonstrated the importance of clonal variations for parasite population dynamics, survival and evolution. By limiting dilution assays, we have isolated sev...

Parasites counteract the action of the immune system and other environmental pressures by modulating and changing the composition of their cell surfaces. Surface multigene protein families are defined not only by highly variable regions in length and/or sequence exposed to the outer space but also by conserved sequences codifying for the signal pep...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small lipid vesicles released by prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells containing nucleic acids, proteins, and small metabolites essential for cellular communication. Depending on the targeted cell, EVs can act either locally or in distant tissues in a paracrine or endocrine cell signaling manner. Released EVs from virus...

The impact of trypanosomatid parasites on honeybee health may represent a major threat to bee colonies worldwide. However, few axenic isolates have been generated to date and with no details on cell culture passages, a parameter that could influence parasite virulence. To address this question, a trypanosomatid isolation protocol was developed and...

Bees are important pollinators in both natural areas and human-cultivated food systems. However, they are increasingly threatened by trypanosomatid parasites like Lotmaria passim. L. passim commonly infects honeybees but has a poorly understood lifecycle. But in a recent study, researchers discovered a new type of trypanosome survival strategy, one...

Lotmaria passim is a ubiquitous trypanosomatid parasite of honey bees nestled within the medically important subfamily Leishmaniinae. Although this parasite is associated with honey bee colony losses, the original draft genome—which was completed before its differentiation from the closely related Crithidia mellificae —has remained the reference fo...

Bees are major pollinators involved in the maintenance of all terrestrial ecosystems. Biotic and abiotic factors placing these insects at risk is a research priority for ecological and agricultural sustainability. Parasites are one of the key players of this global decline and the study of their mechanisms of action is essential to control honeybee...

Background Trypanosomatid parasites are widely distributed in nature and can have a monoxenous or dixenous life-cycle. These parasites thrive in a wide number of insect orders, some of which have an important economic and environmental value, such as bees. The objective of this study was to develop a robust and sensitive real-time quantitative PCR...

Background: Trypanosomatid parasites are widely distributed in nature, evolving monoxenous and dixenous cycles. These parasites thrive in a wide number of Insect Orders, some of them with an important economic and environmental value, such as bees. The objective of this work was to develop a robust and sensitive qPCR assay for detecting trypanosoma...

Bees are a diverse group with more than 1000 species known from the Iberian Peninsula. They have increasingly received special attention due to their important role as pollinators and providers of ecosystem services. In addition, various rapid human-induced environmental changes are leading to the decline of some of its populations. However, we kno...

Continuous improvements in morphological and histochemical analyses of Apis mellifera could improve our understanding of the anatomy and physiology of these insects at both the cellular and tissue level. In this work, two different approaches have been performed to add new data on the abdomen of worker bees: (i) Micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT)...

Crithidia acanthocephali is a trypanosomatid species that was initially described in the digestive tract of Hemiptera. However, this parasite was recently detected in honey bee colonies in Spain, raising the question as to whether bees can act as true hosts for this species. To address this issue, worker bees were experimentally infected with choan...

The remodelling of flagella into attachment structures is a common and important event in the trypanosomatid life cycle. Lotmaria passim and Crithidia mellificae can parasitize Apis mellifera, and as a result they might have a significant impact on honeybee health. However, there are details of their life cycle and the mechanisms underlying their p...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) or exovesicles are a heterogeneous group of small cell-derived membranous structures that carry complex cargoes including lipids, proteins, RNA, and DNA. Emerging evidence suggest that EVs secreted by kinetoplastid parasites play a cardinal role in the pathogenesis of diseases they cause, becoming valuable structures fo...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small lipid vesicles released by either any prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell, or both, with a biological role in cell-to-cell communication. In this work, we characterize the proteomes and nanomechanical properties of EVs released by tissue-culture cell-derived trypomastigotes (mammalian infective stage; (TCT)) and ep...

The remodelling of flagella into attachment structures is a common and important event in the insect stages of the trypanosomatid life cycle. Among their hymenopteran hosts, Lotmaria passim and Crithidia mellificae can parasitize Apis mellifera , and as a result they might have a significant impact on honeybee health. However, there are details of...

Background Chagas disease is the third most important neglected tropical disease. There is no vaccine available, and only two drugs are generally prescribed for the treatment, both of which with a wide range of side effects. Our study of T. cruzi PHBs revealed a pleiotropic function in different stages of the parasite, participating actively in the...

This detailed book provides a comprehensive series of innovative research techniques and methodologies applied to the parasite genomics research area, all applying different approaches to analyzing parasite genomes and furthering the study of genetic complexity and the mechanisms of regulation. Beginning with chapters on novel sequencing and the bi...

Leishmania parasite infections, termed the leishmaniases, cause significant global infectious disease burden. The lifecycle of the parasite embodies three main stages that require precise coordination of gene regulation to survive environmental shifts between sandfly and mammalian hosts. Constitutive transcription in kinetoplastid parasites means t...

Leishmania parasite infections, termed the leishmaniases, cause significant global infectious disease burden. The lifecycle of the parasite embodies three main stages that require precise coordination of gene regulation to survive environmental shifts between sandfly and mammalian hosts. Constitutive transcription in kinetoplastid parasites means t...

Comparison of the proteins identified in T. cruzi (n = 237) (Bayer-Santos et al., 2013), Leishmania major (n = 261) (Silverman et al., 2010), and Trypanosoma brucei (n = 191) (Szempruch et al., 2016) EVs proteomic datasets (hypothetical proteins has been excluded from the analysis).

The parasites belonging to the order Kinetoplastidae are an early eukaryotic branch of unicellular flagellated cells that have evolved from free-living monoxenous organisms to a parasitic lifestyle. The diseases caused by these parasites (Chagas, Leishmaniasis or African trypanosomiasis) have an outstanding clinical importance in terms of mortality...

The fate of an mRNA is determined by its interaction with proteins and small RNAs within dynamic complexes called ribonucleoprotein complexes (mRNPs). In Trypanosoma brucei and related kinetoplastids, responses to internal and external signals are mainly mediated by post-transcriptional processes. Here, we used proximity-dependent biotin identifica...

The exovesicles (EVs) are involved in pathologic host-parasite immune associations and have been recently used as biomarkers for diagnosis of infectious diseases. The release of EVs by Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease, has recently been described, with different protein cargoes including the MASP multigene family of proteins...

The successful progression of Leishmania spp. through their lifecycle entails a series of differentiation processes; the proliferative procyclic promastigote forms become quiescent, human-infective metacyclic promastigotes during metacyclogenesis in the sandfly vector, which then differentiate into amastigotes during amastigogenesis in the mammalia...

Trypanosoma cruzi is the etiological agent of Chagas disease, a neglected and emerging tropical disease, endemic to South America and present in non-endemic regions due to human migration. The MASP multigene family is specific to T. cruzi, accounting for 6% of the parasite’s genome and plays a key role in immune evasion. A common feature of MASPs i...

Some of the most crucial phenotypic aspects of parasites, such as an antigen-coated surface, parasite sexual differentiation, virulence, and drug resistance, rely on adaptive plasticity and/or stochastic events. At a population level, cell to cell variability represents an avenue for rapid response to drastic changes in the environment. Single cell...

Scientific outreach is one of the main ways that researchers can use to publicize their contributions to society. In that sense, dissemination (especially in Spanish) of both veterinarian and human parasitology on the Internet has not been extensively considered, and the resources and places dedicated to this field remain quite limited. The blog "...

Seven three-month-old, female, helminth-free lambs were immunized intranasally with three doses (1 mg total) of a recombinant part of the catalytic region of the serine/threonine phosphatase 2 A (PP2Ar) (G1). In addition, four lambs were used as an adjuvant control group (G2), four as unimmunized, infected controls (G3) and four as unimmunized, uni...

The MASP gene family is the second most widely represented gene family in the genome of Trypanosoma cruzi. One of its main characteristics is that its 5′ and 3′ regions are highly conserved. We assessed the expression of these conserved regions as a marker for T. cruzi and also analyzed the expression of the masp genes and MASP proteins. In parasit...

The Trypanosoma cruzi genome contains the most widely expanded content (∼12,000 genes) of the trypanosomatids sequenced to date. This expansion is reflected in the high number of repetitive sequences and particularly in the large quantity of genes that make up its multigene families. Recently it was discovered that the contents of these families va...

Uso de la proteína Masp52 para el diagnóstico, el tratamiento y la prevención de la enfermedad de Chagas. Se propone el uso de la proteína Masp52, de la familia MASP (Mucin associated Surface proteins) para el diagnóstico, el tratamiento y la prevención de la enfermedad de Chagas, incluyendo un método de detección de la presencia del parásito T. cr...

We describe the characterization, purification, expression, and location of a 52-kDa protein secreted during interaction between the metacyclic form of Trypanosoma cruzi and its target host cell. The protein, which we have named MASP52, belongs to the family of mucin-associated surface proteins (MASPs). The highest levels of expression of both the...

The intergenic region of spliced-leader (SL-IR) genes from 105 Trypanosoma cruzi I (Tc I) infected biological samples, culture isolates and stocks from 11 endemic countries, from Argentina to the USA were characterised, allowing identification of 76 genotypes with 54 polymorphic sites from 123 aligned sequences. On the basis of the microsatellite m...

Intranasal immunization was assayed in C57BL/6 mice against Angiostrongylus costaricensis using a synthetic and a recombinant peptide belonging to the catalytic region of the serine/threonine phosphatase 2 A (PP2A) of the parasite. Immunization was carried out with the synthetic peptide (SP) polymerized either with itself or with the beta fraction...

The action of maslinic acid (2alpha,3beta-dihydroxyolean-12-en-28-oic acid) (1), a pentacyclic derivative present in the pressed fruits of the olive (Olea europaea), has been studied against the tachyzoites of Toxoplasma gondii. The capability of tachyzoites to infect Vero cells treated with 1 was affected. The LD(50) values were 58.2 muM for the i...

We propose maslinic acid (2-alpha, 3-beta-dihydroxiolean-12-en-28-oic acid), found in the leaves and fruit of the olive tree (Olea europaea L.), as a new natural coccidiostatic product against Eimeria tenella. Its action in infected animals has been compared with animals treated with sodium salinomycin. The lesion index (LS), the oocyst index (OI)...

Tesis Univ. Granada. Instituto de Biotecnología. Leída el 30 de junio de 2010

Use of maslinic acid or any deriv. thereof for prepg. a medicine for treatment of disorders and/or diseases and/or symptomatologies characterized by deficiency in human or animal organisms of elastase inhibitors or participation of a natural or pathol. form of this enzyme. In particular, these diseases form part of the list comprising neuromas, ery...

Acanthamoeba infections are difficult to treat due to often late diagnosis and the lack of effective and specific therapeutic agents. The most important reason for unsuccessful therapy seems to be the existence of a double-wall cyst stage that is highly resistant to the available treatments, causing reinfections. The major components of the Acantha...

In the xenodiagnosis (XD) of American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease), Trypanosoma cruzi in the triatomine bugs fed on the patient can now be detected using PCR (XD-PCR) as well as by microscopy (XD-M). In a study to compare XD-PCR with XD-M, triatomine bugs were fed on 50 cases of chronic American trypanosomiasis, of whom only 25 were ever found...

The invention relates to 2α,3β-dihydroxy-28-carboxyolean-12-ene acid (maslinic acid) and the salts and derivs. of same, which are used as serine protease inhibitors in order to obtain prepns. that are intended for the treatment and prevention of parasitosis caused in humans and animals by species of the phylum Apicomplexa: Eimeria, Toxoplasma, Neos...

SUMMARY We report on the use of Leishmania donovani lipid-binding proteins (LBPs) as antigens capable of being recognized by serum from immunocompetent patients from southern Spain suffering from visceral leishmaniasis and from Peruvian patients with localized cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania braziliensis. The absorbance found by immuno...

In a patient with mitral stenosis, transthoracic echocardiography revealed a left atrial appendage thrombus. A repeat study performed after 4 weeks of oral anticoagulant therapy demonstrated the disappearance of the left atrial clot. These findings were subsequently confirmed by transesophageal echocardiography which also revealed left atrial spont...

Número de publicación: 2 304 322 Número de solicitud: 200700843 Uso de ácido maslínico y sus derivados para la inhibición de elastasa y para el tratamiento de enfermedades y sintomatologías con ella relacionadas, sintomatologías caracterizadas por una deficiencia en organismos humanos o animales de inhibidores de elastasa o la participación de una...