Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2021, Vol. 52 ›› Issue (11): 2995-3005.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2021.011.001

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Research Progress in Protein Post-translational Modifications of Toxoplasma gondii

YIN Deqi, WEI Ziwei, ZHANG Yiwei, SANG Xiaoyu, YANG Na, FENG Ying, CHEN Ran, JIANG Ning*   

  1. College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
  • Received:2021-02-01 Online:2021-11-23 Published:2021-11-24

Abstract: Toxoplasma gondii, as one of the Apicomplexa phylum parasites, which repeatedly goes through a cycle of invasion, division and induction of host cell rupture, which is an obligatory process for proliferation inside warm-blooded animals. It is known that the biology of the parasite is controlled by a variety of factors ranging from genomic to epigenetic to transcriptional regulation. One of the mechanisms by which Toxoplasma gondii likely regulates responses to extracellular stimuli and life cycle transitions is through protein post-translational modifications (PTMs). PTMs, such as phosphorylation, ubiquitination, crotonylation, palmitoylation, succinylation, acetylation, methylation, glycosylation and 2-hydroxyisobutyrylation, regulate numerous metabolic processes and every aspect of T. gondii biology. PTMs can play a vital role in any time of their lifespan, which through alterations of target protein localization, structure, activity, protein-protein interactions, among other functions, dramatically increase proteome complexity and diversity. In this review, we highlight the advanced insights into PTMs in T. gondii and their crosstalk, laying a foundation for in-depth study on the biological characteristics of T. gondii.

Key words: Toxoplasma gondii, apicomplexan parasite, protein posttranslational modifications, epigenetic

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