Identification of transporters essential for survival of Leishmania promastigotes in the digestive tract of sand flies

Leishmania amastigotes ingested by female phlebotomine sand flies are exposed to a harsh and dynamic environment that differs markedly from the intracellular niche in the mammalian host in temperature, pH and nutrient availability. Membrane transporter proteins, channels and pumps play a crucial role in maintaining cellular physiology under changing environments. A systematic loss-of-function screen of the L. mexicana transporter deletion mutants in macrophage and mouse infections previously identified transporter genes important for the amastigote stage. To test which transporters are important for the promastigote stage in the insect vector, we measured the fitness of gene deletion mutants in Lu. longipalpis sand flies. Pooled libraries of different complexities, consisting of 71-317 barcoded parasite lines allowed for an estimation of the bottleneck size in experimental infections, providing a foundation for similar experimental bar-seq studies. The fitness of each mutant parasite line was measured by tracking population composition over a course of 9 days in the sand flies and compared with the growth fitness of promastigotes over 7 days in laboratory cultures. There was a high correlation of fitness scores in vitro and in vivo, but 34 mutants showed a loss of fitness only in vivo, including deletion mutants of vacuolar H + ATPase (V-ATPase) subunits. V-ATPase deletion mutants expressed low levels of the metacyclic-specific transcript sherp in vitro and failed to generate metacyclic promastigotes in sand flies, indicating that V-ATPase function is required for parasite differentiation and progression through the Leishmania life cycle.