{"doi":"10.17615/b19s-7d42","title":"Role of p38 in Replication of Trypanosoma brucei Kinetoplast DNA","abstract":"Trypanosomes have an unusual mitochondrial genome, called kinetoplast DNA, that is a giant network containing thousands of interlocked minicircles. During kinetoplast DNA synthesis, minicircles are released from the network for replication as θ-structures, and then the free minicircle progeny reattach to the network. We report that a mitochondrial protein, which we term p38, functions in kinetoplast DNA replication. RNA interference (RNAi) of p38 resulted in loss of kinetoplast DNA and accumulation of a novel free minicircle species named fraction S. Fraction S minicircles are so underwound that on isolation they become highly negatively supertwisted and develop a region of Z-DNA. p38 binds to minicircle sequences within the replication origin. We conclude that cells with RNAi-induced loss of p38 cannot initiate minicircle replication, although they can extensively unwind free minicircles.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":117733,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9529,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":26351,"name":"B. Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-2823-9307","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":510735,"name":"J. D. Griffith","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":549066,"name":"A. Pandey","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":549067,"name":"H. Molina","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":549068,"name":"D. Kalume","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":549065,"name":"P. T. Englund","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:54.951170Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}