Discussion

During their complex life cycle, trypanosomes shuttle between an insect vector and a mammalian host. This process requires the tightly regulated coordination of several developmental pathways in order to survive in these extremely different environments. Changes to the nuclear architecture and chromatin structure have also been described during differentiation of the parasite. To learn more about these adaptation processes we analysed 4270 proteins during differentiation of the parasite using quantitative mass spectrometry. I want to use this dataset to find factors responsible for dynamic changes in chromatin structure during developmental differentiation. To this end, I combined the data from the quantitative proteomic study with an additional mass spectrometry analysis of the nuclear proteome. I am now focusing on the characterisation of nuclear proteins that are transiently upregulated during differentiation. These include hypothetical proteins with unknown functions, as well as the histone methyltransferase DOT1B and proteins of the nuclear pore complex. Further characterisation of these factors could provide more insight into the poorly-understood differentiation machinery of trypanosomes.