Discussion

African trypanosomes exhibit non-canonical cAMP signaling pathways. A recent genome wide RNAi screen for genes implicated in resistance to elevated cAMP has identified several putative cAMP response proteins (CARPs). Given that adenylate cyclase activity was reported to influence trypanosome social motility (SoMo), we functionally screened the identified proteins for SoMo defects using inducible RNAi mediated knockdown. At least one CARP is involved in SoMo as demonstrated by complete loss of group motility in knockdown and knockout cell lines.