Figure 5. Phosphorylation of eIF2α is essential for the differentiation of epimastigotes into metacyclic trypomastigotes.

(A) Number of metacyclic trypomastigotes on the supernatant of control wild type parasites (c), of parasites overexpressing the wild type eIF2α protein (OE WT) and of parasites overexpressing the mutant eIF2αT¹⁶⁹A protein (OE Tc-eIF2αT¹⁶⁹A) subjected to the differentiation protocol of incubation in TAU medium for 2 h followed by 72 h of incubation in TAU3AAG medium. The bars represent the mean ± SD from triplicates. T-student, p<0,01 (n = 3) (B) Immunoblot analysis of whole cell extracts from parasites recovered from the supernatant of differentiating cultures using the monoclonal antibody 10D8 (top panel) and anti-tubulin antibodies for normalization (bottom panel).