Introduction
The peculiarities of carbohydrate metabolism of the African trypanosome has received much attention and has been the subject of intense research for many years. The fact that bloodstream-form trypanosomes can easily be grown in large numbers in the blood of infected rats has certainly contributed to this situation. With the advent of the tools of molecular biology even the number of cells available for research is often not a limiting factor anymore and this has led to an exponential growth of the literature of a more molecular nature in this area. A vast number of publications is available on the glycolytic pathway of the African trypanosome and its respective enzymes and it would be impossible to cover it all at this place. For a more detailed description of the earlier work the reader is referred to a number of previous reviews (Opperdoes 1987; Opperdoes, 1988; Opperdoes and Michels, 1993; Hannaert and Michels, 1994; Michels and Hannaert, 1994). The more recent information about the bloodstream forms will be discussed here, together with what is known about the procyclic insect stage. The intermediate bloodstream stages, the short stumpy forms, as well as the epimastigotes and metacyclics present in the insects, can either not yet or not easily be obtained in sufficient quantities and as a consequence little to nothing is known about their metabolism.