Dihydroxyacetone induced autophagy in African trypanosomes.

Dihydroxyacetone (DHA) was examined to explore its trypanocidal activity. The compound is easily taken up by trypanosomes via its aquaglyceroporins but is not converted to a glycolytic intermediate due to the lack of a respective kinase. Investigating the DHA-induced cell death it became evident that parasites die by autophagy rather than by necrosis or apoptosis. Since autophagy is not well studied in African trypanosomes our work offers a way to investigate the importance of autophagy for trypanosomes not only for stress coping but also for organelle reconstruction during differentiation.