Our laboratory is interested to understand the complex mechanism of translation regulation in Leishmania. Leishmania are known for their unusual molecular properties, including polycistronic transcription, and trans-splicing of mRNAs followed by an addition of spliced leader RNA that provides an unusual hyper-modified cap structure denoted as cap-4. Leishmania are exposed to extreme environmental conditions during the life-cycle and we want to understand how parasites adapt its molecular machinery under these different conditions. There is no evidence of transcriptional regulation of gene expression in Leishmania. Therefore, post-transcriptional events like mRNA stability and translation are central mechanism that drives the developmental program of gene expression.

Selected Publications

Tupperwar NC, Meleppattu S, Shrivastava R, Baron N, Gilad A, Wagner G, Léger-Abraham M, Shapira M. A newly identified Leishmania IF4E-interacting protein, Leish4E-IP2, modulates the activity of cap-binding protein paralogs. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 May 7; 48(8):4405-4417. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkaa173.PMID: 32232353

Tupperwar NC, Shrivastava R, Shapira M. LeishIF4E1 Deletion Affects the Promastigote Proteome, Morphology, and Infectivity. mSphere. 2019 Nov 13; 4(6):e00625-19. doi: 10.1128/mSphere.00625-19.PMID: 31722993

Tupperwar NC, Rohit Shrivastava, Nofar Baron, Orli Korchev, Irit Orr and Michal Shapira. Characterization of atypical cap-binding factor LeishIF4E-6 in Leishmania. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2021, 22, 12720. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms222312720

Baron N*, Tupperwar NC*, Dahan I, Hadad U, Davidov G, Zarivach R and Shapira M. Distinct features of the Leishmania cap-binding protein LeishIF4E2 revealed by a CRISPR-Cas9 mediated hemizygous deletion. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021 Mar 24;15(3):e0008352. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0008352. (*Equal first author)

Tupperwar NC, Vineeth V, Rath S, Vaidya T. Development of a real-time polymerase chain reaction assay for the quantification of Leishmania species and the monitoring of systemic distribution of the pathogen. Diag Microbiol Infect Dis. 2008 May; 61(1):23-30. doi: 0.1016/j.diagmicrobio.2007.12.013. Epub 2008 Feb 5.PMID: 18255247