Nucleoside transporters of parasitic protozoa

Protozoan parasites are incapable of synthesizing purine nucleotides de nov o and so must salvage preformed purines from their hosts. This process of p urine acquisition is initiated by the translocation of preformed host purin es across parasite or host membranes. Here, we report upon the identificati on and isolation of DNAs encoding parasite nucleoside transporters and the functional characterization of these proteins in various expression systems . These potential approaches provide a powerful approach for a thorough mol ecular and biochemical dissection of nucleoside transport in protozoan para sites.