SHORT COMMUNICATION Trypanosoma cruzi: Establishment of Permeable Cells for RNA Processing Analysis with Drugs

Pre-mRNA maturation in trypanosomatids occurs through a process called trans-splicing which involves exci-sion of introns and union of exons in two independent transcripts. For the first time, we present the standardization of Trypanosoma cruzi permeable cells (Y strain) as a model for trans-splicing study of mRNAs in trypanosomes, following by RNase protection reaction, which localizes the SL exon and intron. This trans-splicing reaction in vitro was also used to analyze the influence of NFOH-121, a nitrofurazone-derivative, on this mechanism. The results suggested that the prodrug affects the RNA processing in these parasites, but the trans-splicing reaction still occurred. Key words: trans-splicing- Trypanosoma cruzi- NFOH-121 (hydroxymethylnitrofurazone) In the process of pre-mRNA maturation, known as splicing, the introns (non-coding regions of polypeptides) are removed from primary transcripts and the exons (cod-ing regions) joined to form a contiguous sequence speci-fying a functional polypeptide. It was observed that the process is dependent on ribonucleoproteins, small mol-ecules of RNA binding proteins with different forms an