The Institute of Biological, Environmental & Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3D, UK.
Parasit Vectors. 2011 Jul 7;4:131. doi: 10.1186/1756-3305-4-131.
Blood flukes within the genus Schistosoma still remain a major cause of disease in the tropics and subtropics and the study of their evolution has been an area of major debate and research. With the advent of modern molecular and genomic approaches deeper insights have been attained not only into the divergence and speciation of these worms, but also into the historic movement of these parasites from Asia into Africa, via migration and dispersal of definitive and snail intermediate hosts. This movement was subsequently followed by a radiation of Schistosoma species giving rise to the S. mansoni and S. haematobium groups, as well as the S. indicum group that reinvaded Asia. Each of these major evolutionary events has been marked by distinct changes in genomic structure evident in differences in mitochondrial gene order and nuclear chromosomal architecture between the species associated with Asia and Africa. Data from DNA sequencing, comparative molecular genomics and karyotyping are indicative of major constitutional genomic events which would have become fixed in the ancestral populations of these worms. Here we examine how modern genomic techniques may give a more in depth understanding of the evolution of schistosomes and highlight the complexity of speciation and divergence in this group.
血吸虫属中的血吸仍然是热带和亚热带地区的主要疾病原因，对其进化的研究一直是一个主要的争论和研究领域。随着现代分子和基因组方法的出现，不仅深入了解了这些蠕虫的分歧和物种形成，也深入了解了这些寄生虫从亚洲到非洲的历史性迁移和传播，通过最终宿主和蜗牛中间宿主的迁移和传播。这种迁移随后伴随着血吸虫物种的辐射，导致曼氏血吸虫和埃及血吸虫组，以及重新入侵亚洲的印度血吸虫组的产生。这些主要进化事件中的每一个都伴随着基因组结构的明显变化，这在与亚洲和非洲相关的物种之间的线粒体基因顺序和核染色体结构的差异中显而易见。来自 DNA 测序、比较分子基因组学和染色体组型的数据表明，这些蠕虫的祖先群体中存在主要的结构性基因组事件，这些事件已经固定下来。在这里，我们研究了现代基因组技术如何更深入地了解血吸虫的进化，并强调了该群体中物种形成和分歧的复杂性。
