Fig 1. Biological characterisation of T. congolense material for expression analysis.

(A) Parasitaemia (lines) and cell cycle status (bars) of T. congolense IL3000 in murine infections used to generate samples for ‘peak parasitaemia’ transcriptome analysis. The proportion of parasites presenting 2 kinetoplast, 1 nucleus (2K1N), or 2 kinetoplast 2 nuclei (2K2N) configurations was assessed in 500 cells at each time point, providing a measure of proliferating cells in the population. As the parasitaemias progressed beyond 1x10⁸ parasites/ml the proportion of proliferating parasites declined indicative of cell cycle arrest. Asterisks indicate when the sample was harvested. (B) Ethidium bromide stained total RNA of T. congolense ‘ascending’ and ‘peak’ parasitaemia samples. Note that T. congolense presents 5 major rRNA bands, contrasting with 3 in T. brucei.