Trypanosomes molecular biology

Donelson, J., and Rice-Ficht, A. (1985) Molecular biology of trypanosome antigenic variation. Microbiol. Rev. 49 107-125. 

N-Ribohydrolases have been found to be involved in novel pathways of purine salvage in protozoan parasites as well as in nucleic acid repair, and exhibit other interesting biological activities [178]. In order to investigate the molecular electrostatic potential surface of the enzyme from the trypanosome Crithidia fasci-culata, several l,4-dideoxy-l,4-imino-D-ribitol derivatives were synthesized as nucleoside analogues and their inhibitory powers were tested [179,180]. In the course of this work, l,4-dideoxy-l,4-imino-l(S)-phenyl-D-ribitol (97) was found to inhibit this enzyme with K 30 nmol/1. 

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