Journal of Camel Practice and Research

The differences between the host and parasite metabolic paths could be a hot spot for discovery of antiparasitic targets. In this work, the metabolic paths of uridine and deoxyuridine in camels and the blood protozoan Trypanosoma evansi (T. evansi) were investigated by bioinformatics tools. While a set of de novo and salvage enzymes of uridine were found in camels, T. evansi was lacking uridine kinase and the source of UMP comes through salvage of uridine conversion to uracil. Therefore, inhibition of uridine phosphorylase (UPase) or cytidine deaminase (CDa) will affect the downstream UMP, dUMP and thymidylate synthesis by lowering the levels of uracil and uridine inside the parasite, respectively. Given the presence of two UPases in camel, low sequence similarity between camel and T. evansi UPases and CDase, targeting these enzymes might be without deleterious effects on the host cells.