Signaling in Stress Sensing and Resistance in Parasitic Protozoa

Stress sensing and stress responses are extremely important for parasite resistance and survival in the host system. In most cases, the transformation to different life cycle stages of a parasite is also triggered by stress which in turn is responsible for parasite survival and infectivity. Most of the parasites like Leishmania, Trypanosoma, and Toxoplasma show how critical the stress responses are with respect to parasitic disease progression and parasite transmission. They have widely divergent life cycles, living in different niches that may include time in insect vectors, mammalian hosts, the outside environment, or a combination of these. Such drastic changes in locale imply that the stress conditions they encounter are highly specific, but the way they deal with the resulting stresses share common features. Some of the major stress response pathways characterized to date in these protists are by heat shock proteins by stabilizing the protein folding and signaling pathways, by regulating different kinases to reduce translation on one hand and increase the expression and activity of the remedy gene systems like the antioxidant defense of the parasite or the redox protein system and lastly by special organelles like the acidocalcisomes by controlling amino acids and polyP pool of the parasite.

The aim of the research topic is to understand how parasitic protozoa cope with their stressful environments in the different life cycle stages be it intracellular or extracellular lifestyles. It is also our aim to highlight how such stress signals are associated in initiating signal transduction leading to parasite resistance, survival, important facets of pathogenesis, and infectious disease manifestation and dissemination.

Additional scope and manuscript information:
(i) Manuscripts are to be full, regular research papers having a word limit of 6000 words without figure legends or the reference list. Specific themes: stress signaling in Apicomplexa, stress signaling in flagellates, stress signaling in Amoeba, Mechanisms of protozoon parasite resistance to stress, Molecular Signaling aiding to parasite survival and infectivity against environmental stress (ii) The list of proposed manuscripts should represent a good coverage of the highest quality focusing on a stress sensing signaling of parasitic protozoa and their mechanisms to resist the stress. (iii) Ideally, a “mini”-review paper can be written for the special edition, perhaps by the Guest Editor(s), and perhaps to introduce the volume in place of a traditional preface. This mini-review introduction is intended to lead the reader into the subject of the Special Issue, summarize the new findings, and suggest perspectives for further work. This mini-review will also go through the normal peer-review process.