Fig 5. Carbons from glycerol are incorporated into PPP intermediates and VSG glycans.

(A) ¹³C from glycerol is incorporated into PPP intermediates, such as pentose 5-phosphate which is further used for ATP and GTP synthesis. The samples and visualization are as in Fig 4B. (B) VSG was purified from wild-type and THT1/THT2 RNAi knockdown parasites grown with and without ¹³C glycerol, as indicated, and subjected to monosaccharide compositional analysis by GC-MS. Following correction for natural isotope abundance, the proportion of VSG-derived mannose and galactose residues containing ¹³C carbon from glycerol were determined. For all analyses, n = 3; * p < 0.0001, Student’s t-test.