📣 Open postdoc position in my lab to investigate how Toxoplasma acquires nutrients. Join me at the University of Edinburgh. Closing date 14th August. More details below ⬇️

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

I am looking for a Research Technician! Come join me in my quest to unlock the secrets of Toxoplasma’s RNA-binding proteins and how they help these parasites steal nutrients. Deadline for applications is August 6th! www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/technici...

New preprint alert 🔔🎉 We are so happy to share that our latest work “ZFT is the major iron and zinc transporter in Toxoplasma gondii” is now available online! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It was wonderful to connect with you too Ayushi! Excited to see what’s next for you :)

Fantastic opportunity with a great supervisor!

Thanks to the organisers for #EMBLRBP meeting! Can’t wait for day 3 to begin! Come to poster #148 to hear about how the most successful parasite might use RBPs to steal from you! The perfect poster to get you in the mood for @shikhas.bsky.social to dazzle you with some funky mitoribosomes @6:30PM!

Can wait to see where the Maclean Lab goes! You will be missed around here. Good luck buddy.

9/ So why are the zft transcripts more stable in low iron? In other systems, aconitase can stabilise specific transcripts through IRE-binding. However, RIP-seq experiments failed to find a significant association between aconitase and zft transcripts. So this remains an open question…for now...

8/ And it wasn't just zft transcripts with altered stability in low iron culture! We found ~50 other transcripts which became more, or less stable. Most don't have a predicted IRE. However, several other motifs of interest were identified computationally and will be of interest for future work.

7/ How does the reporter work? Looking at transcript abundance after blocking transcription we saw that reporter transcripts (and endogenous zft transcripts) are more stable when parasites are cultured in low iron. So, UTR-mediated stability is important to responding to low iron.

6/ Is the putative IRE functional? Removal of the stem-loop from the zft 3'UTR reduced iron responsiveness at both transcript and protein levels. Further, changing the zft UTR reduced parasite fitness in a low iron environment. This underlines the importance of UTR-mediated regulation of zft.

5/ We used the reporter to look at low iron response kinetics. Transcript levels peaked at 18h, returning to untreated levels by 24 hours. Similar to endogenous ZFT transcripts. Protein levels peaked later at 24h Suggesting parasites make more zft in low iron, rather than inhibit its degradation.

4/ We made a reporter cell line with the zft 3'UTR, containing the putative IRE, downstream tdTomato. Our reporter cell line responded to iron chelation in a dose dependent way, but was not responsive to chelators for Zinc or Copper. So, the zft UTR is sufficient to confer iron responsiveness.

3/ Given the strong, non-specific transcriptomic response, we searched for downstream post-transcriptional regulation. We found 234 transcripts contained short, stem-loop sequences similar to known iron-response elements (IREs). One such transcript was the putative iron transporter ZFT.

2/ If we reduce available iron using a chelator, we see a broad transcriptional response after 24 hours. As predicted, there were changes genes iron-dependant pathways e.g. DNA metabolism and FeS cluster synthesis. We also saw patterns consistent with differentiation in our dataset.

1/ We know Toxoplasma need iron, and that its availability is variable between host cell environments. We were interested to know how these parasites sense and respond to low iron levels.

Excited to be able to share our new paper 'Iron Mediated Post-Transcriptional Regulation in Toxoplasma gondii'! Thanks to all involved including the awesome @clarehardinglab.bsky.social and @danaaghabi.bsky.social! journals.plos.org/plospathogen.... Read on for quick-read digest of our new work...

Lovely work from @shikhas.bsky.social et al. 😍

Remember learning that ribosomes are made of 1 large subunit RNA + 1 small subunit RNA?
Well, some cells defy this rule, and the most extreme case is Toxoplasma which makes its mitoribosome from >50 RNA pieces!
Wanna know how? Read below

Opportunities are popping up in every parasite field! For Toxoplasma, check out @sheinerlab.bsky.social, and for Trypanosoma, head over to @fariatrypslab.bsky.social

Interested in malaria? Don’t miss your chance to join @abhinay.bsky.social to learn more about Plasmodium!

Apply, apply, apply! Don't miss out on your chance to work with a fantastic scientist and mentor!

How SPPIRIT is transforming early career profiles in Parasitology in Scotland

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A parasitology postdoc what you’re looking for in 2025? Still time to apply! Closes 15th Jan

Hi everyone!
We are SPPIRIT, a Scottish ECR network created by a group of postdocs, research fellows, and PIs motivated to develop and strengthen the parasitology community in Scotland.
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