TY - JOUR T1 - Role of GP82 in the Selective Binding to Gastric Mucin during Oral Infection with Trypanosoma cruzi A1 - Staquicini, Daniela I. A1 - Martins, Rafael M. A1 - Macedo, Silene A1 - Sasso, Gisela R. S. A1 - Atayde, Vanessa D. A1 - Juliano, Maria A. A1 - Yoshida, Nobuko Y1 - 2010/03/02 N2 - Author Summary Frequent outbreaks of acute Chagas' disease by food contamination with T. cruzi, characterized by high mortality, have been reported in recent years. In Brazil, oral infection is currently the most important mechanism of T. cruzi transmission. Studies on oral T. cruzi infection in mice have shown that insect-stage metacyclic trypomastigotes invade only the gastric mucosal epithelium and not other areas of mucosal epithelia prior to establishing systemic infection. Here we have shown that metacyclic trypomastigotes bind selectively to gastric mucin, a property also displayed by gp82, a metacyclic stage-specific surface protein implicated in cell adhesion/invasion process. It is also shown that the gastric mucin-binding property of gp82 resides in the central domain of the molecule and that the synthetic peptide p7, based on a gastric mucin-binding sequence of gp82, markedly reduces parasite invasion of cultured human epithelial cells in the presence of gastric mucin. These results, plus the finding that mice that received peptide p7 before oral infection with metacyclic trypomastigotes had fewer parasites replicating in the gastric mucosa and developed lower parasitemias than control mice, lead us to suggest that gp82-mediated interaction with gastric mucin may direct T. cruzi to stomach mucosal epithelium in oral infection. JF - PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases JA - PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases VL - 4 IS - 3 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0000613 SP - e613 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000613 ER -