Christian Tschudi
Yale University, CT·Microbiology & Immunology
African trypanosomes are single-celled parasites that hide from the immune system by repeatedly changing the protein coat on their surface. Trypanosoma brucei, spread by the bite of tsetse flies, causes African sleeping sickness in humans and nagana, a fatal wasting disease, in cattle and other farm animals.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
Trypanosoma brucei
African trypanosomiasis
sleeping sickness
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Determine how T. brucei parasites receive the signal to begin making the metacyclic VSG (mVSG) coat that lets them infect mammals, using parasites induced to develop by switching on the RNA-binding protein RBP6.
- Find out when during development each parasite commits to expressing a single mVSG, using single-cell RNA sequencing and long-term live-cell imaging of developing trypanosomes.
- Investigate how an exonic splicing enhancer, a sequence inside mVSG genes that promotes RNA processing, drives the tightly controlled, extremely high production of mature VSG messenger RNA.
More about the research
There are no vaccines, and current drugs have serious side effects and are becoming less effective. Understanding how the parasite controls its coat as it moves between insect and mammal could point to new ways to fight these diseases.
Why it matters
Sleeping sickness in people and nagana in cattle, pigs and other livestock remain serious problems in sub-Saharan Africa, where livestock infections strongly affect the economy. No vaccines exist, and existing drugs are toxic and losing effectiveness. By showing how infectious parasites switch on their protective surface coat, this work may reveal new weak points that future drugs or other strategies could target.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Arthur Gunzl
University of Connecticut, CT·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how the cyclin-dependent kinase CRK9 controls spliced leader trans splicing in Trypanosoma brucei, including whether it phosphorylates the splicing factor TSR1, using parasites with chemically inhibitable analog-sensitive CRK9.
Ruslan Afasizhev
Boston University, MA·Biochemistry
Define how complexes built around KRET1, an enzyme that adds U-tails to RNA, couple tailing with RNA degradation in the T. brucei mitochondrion, using proteomics, imaging, and cryo-EM.
Guillaume Chanfreau
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Biochemistry
Determine how nuclear ribonucleases, including the RNA exosome, RNase III and the Rex exonucleases, regulate expression of chromatin remodeling factors such as bromodomain proteins when cells are placed under stress.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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