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. 2021 Apr 15;9:669041. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.669041

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

Examples of putative mechanisms dependent on recombination events and DSBs in trypanosomatids. (A) Antigenic variation by recombination events in T. brucei – DSBs within repeat elements (70 bp repeats) are catalysts for VSGs switching. Of note, DSBs occur naturally in active bloodstream expression sites (BES). (B) Genetic exchange in T. cruzi – Hybrid T. cruzi cells have slightly increased Rad51 expression (Alves et al., 2018), which may contribute to driving homologous recombination (HR) between direct repeated sequences (DRS) during the genetic exchange, resulting in the integration of an exogenous DNA. (C) Gene amplification in Leishmania spp. – DSBs nearby or within DRS may trigger HR and lead to gene copy number variation (gene CNV). In the scheme, the genes B and C were amplified.