It is interesting to note that bacteria, mammalia, viridi plantae and apicomplexa have an indication of a com mon ancestor with a strong bootstrap support. Kinetoplastid sequences no are divided in two defined clades, again with very strong bootstrap support. One group of kinetoplastids comprises sequences annotated as aminopeptidases and the other group contains sequences assigned as leucyl aminopeptidases. Although these two clades are members of the M17 family, their sequence divergence indicates that the ancestral trypa nosomatid giving origin to both Leishmania and Trypa nosoma already contained these two enzymes. LAPTc assembles into a hexamer The recombinant active and soluble form of LAPTc was produced in E. coli containing a His tag at its N termi nus.

It was purified by affinity chromatography on a nickel column upon elution with 200 mM imidazol and then submitted to size exclusion chromatography. The activity co migrates with the main protein peak of 320 kDa that was submitted to SDS PAGE ana lysis. In gel enzymography of the gel showed that only a 220 kDa protein band mediates enzymatic activity on Leu AMC when PAGE was carried out without previous heating of the sample and in the presence of 0. 1% SDS. Protein bands of about 220 and 55 kDa were revealed upon staining of the same gel. Under the same experimental conditions, sample boiling resulted in complete monomerization of rLAPTc. Unlike its endogenous form that conserves an oligomeric structure in the presence of 0. 1% SDS, rLAPTc is very sensitive to this detergent and is only entirely seen as an oligomer in the presence of SDS as low as 0.

01%. These data show that, regardless of their sensitivity to SDS, both endogenous and recombinant forms of LAPTc behave the same when submitted to PAGE and size exclusion chromatography. To solve the divergence in its molecular mass determi nation, we further submitted affinity chromatography purified rLAPTc to SEC MALLS and to analytical ultra centrifugation analysis. MALLS measurements allow the molecular mass of macromolecules in solution to be cal culated, taking into account the absolute concentrations obtained with a differential refraction index detector. The elution profile showed the presence of five resolved peaks corresponding to different oligomeric species eluting at 6. 5, 8. 5, 9, 10 and 11. 2 ml.

The main protein peak was eluted at 10 ml and repre sents 45% of the mass recovery. As expected, light scat tering measurements exhibited higher signal for the larger species eluting first, given that light scattering is directly related to the concentration and molecular Entinostat mass of the observed objects. Molecular mass calculations revealed that the first protein peak corresponds to highly aggregated species with molecular masses above 10,000 kDa. The peaks eluting at 8. 5, 9, 10 and 11. 2 ml corre spond to oligomers of 1025, 625, 314 and 176 kDa, respectively.