Trypanosoma congolense: mechanical removal of the surface coat in vitro

By shaking suspensions of Trypanosoma congolense in isotonic buffer the surface coat could be separated from the cell body. The release of radioactivity from trypanosomes, selectively labeled in the surface coat by diazoniobenzenesulfonate, was used to follow the kinetics of coat detachment. The proteins in the supernatants of shaken trypanosomes were analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate—polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The shaking conditions had to be carefully controlled to avoid complete rupture of trypanosomes. Otherwise the coat protein was rapidly degraded by endogenous proteases. The influence of several parameters on the yield of coat release and the degree of degradation of the coat protein was investigated, including the ratio of trypanosome suspension volume to shaking vessel volume, vessel surface, temperature, shaking frequency, and preincubation of the trypanosomes at 0 C. By combining these parameters an optimal scheme was developed which allowed the separation of more than 90% of the coat protein from T. congolense, the detached protein showing no degradation at all. These results could be confirmed by electron microscopy of shaken and unshaken trypanosomes.