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An Investigation Of Trypanosoma Brucei Hexokinases: Localization, Oligomerization, And Inhibition, April Joice

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Trypanosoma brucei is the causative agent of African sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in livestock. The parasite inhabits multiple environmental niches including the bloodstream of the mammalian host and the mid-gut of the tsetse fly vector. While in the bloodstream of its mammalian host, the organism depends solely on glycolysis for production of ATP. My studies focus on the first enzyme in glycolysis, hexokinase.
T. brucei has two hexokinases, TbHK1 and TbHK2 that are 98.5% identical at the nucleotide level. The hexokinases are expressed in the glycosomes of both procyclic form and bloodstream form parasites. Glycosomes are peroxisome-like organelles …