Discussion

African trypanosomes are able to recover from high suramin pressure in vitro and grow new cultures with a massively lower drug susceptibility. To unravel the mechanisms leading to this phenomenon, forward genetic approaches were applied using mRNA sequencing of one T. b. rhodesiense clone and four independently selected lines. Gene-expression analysis revealed very few differentially expressed transcripts. Interestingly, the selected lines showed upregulation of the identical VSG-like gene.