Federico Rojas

The SilicoTryp project aims at the creation of a “Silicon Trypanosome”, a comprehensive, experiment-based, multi-scale mathematical model of trypanosome physiology. Trypanosomes are blood-stream parasites transmitted by tsetse flies; they cause African sleeping sickness in humans and livestock. Currently available drugs have severe side effects, and the parasites are rapidly developing resistance. In this project, we collect a wide range of new experimental data on the parasite in its various ...

Multiply perturbations of trypanosome redox metabolism, closing the feedback loop between experimentation and in silioc modelling, allowing model refinement or, where there are unexpected outcomes, re-evaluation. Providing a dynamic picture of cell physiology by examining programmed metabolic changes during the developmental life-cycle of these parasites as they adapt to very different external milieus, including distinct levels of oxidative stress and unique adaptations of their redox balance ...

Key enzymes of critical points in the pathways will be targeted for disruption by the generation of RNAi cell lines and lines which drive tetracycline-regulatable ectopic over expression of either wild type enzyme or, if appropriate, dominant-negative or mis-targeted mutants of these. In all cases perturbed lines will be analysed with respect to the mRNA, protein or enzymatic activities of other components of the subsystem, this being directed iteratively by the predictions from systems modelling. ...

For the study of mRNA decay rates, transcription was inhibited with ActinomycinD, and RNA splicing with Sinefungin, at different time points, in the Matthews lab. rRNA depleted RNA was extracted from each of the samples in the Clayton lab, and sent for deep sequencing at the BioQuant facility in Heidelberg

We routinely select specific RNAi gene targets (400–600 bp) and primers using the RNAit software http://trypanofan.path.cam.ac.uk/software/RNAit.html. A single pair of PCR primers are designed that incorporate four selected restriction sites (not present in the RNAi target fragment) such that a single PCR product can be differentially digested and sequentially cloned. For example, using MCS1/2, the following primers could be used to clone antisense followed by sense fragments: Primer 1, XbaI–BamHI-5′ ...