Li Ben-Wen, McNulty Samantha N, Rosa Bruce A, Tyagi Rahul, Zeng Qing Ren, Gu Kong-Zhen, Weil Gary J, Mitreva Makedonka
Infectious Diseases Division, Department of Internal Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
The McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Parasit Vectors. 2016 Sep 13;9(1):497. doi: 10.1186/s13071-016-1785-x.
Paragonimiasis is an important and widespread neglected tropical disease. Fifteen Paragonimus species are human pathogens, but two of these, Paragonimus westermani and P. skrjabini, are responsible for the bulk of human disease. Despite their medical and economic significance, there is limited information on the gene content and expression of Paragonimus lung flukes.
The transcriptomes of adult P. westermani and P. skrjabini were studied with deep sequencing technology. Approximately 30 million reads per species were assembled into 21,586 and 25,825 unigenes for P. westermani and P. skrjabini, respectively. Many unigenes showed homology with sequences from other food-borne trematodes, but 1,217 high-confidence Paragonimus-specific unigenes were identified. Analyses indicated that both species have the potential for aerobic and anaerobic metabolism but not de novo fatty acid biosynthesis and that they may interact with host signaling pathways. Some 12,432 P. westermani and P. skrjabini unigenes showed a clear correspondence in bi-directional sequence similarity matches. The expression of shared unigenes was mostly well correlated, but differentially expressed unigenes were identified and shown to be enriched for functions related to proteolysis for P. westermani and microtubule based motility for P. skrjabini.
The assembled transcriptomes of P. westermani and P. skrjabini, inferred proteins, and extensive functional annotations generated for this project (including identified primary sequence similarities to various species, protein domains, biological pathways, predicted proteases, molecular mimics and secreted proteins, etc.) represent a valuable resource for hypothesis driven research on these medically and economically important species.
肺吸虫病是一种重要且广泛流行的被忽视热带病。十五种肺吸虫属物种是人类病原体，但其中两种，即卫氏并殖吸虫和斯氏狸殖吸虫，是导致大部分人类疾病的病因。尽管它们具有医学和经济意义，但关于肺吸虫的基因组成和表达的信息有限。
利用深度测序技术研究了卫氏并殖吸虫和斯氏狸殖吸虫成虫的转录组。每个物种大约3000万条 reads 分别被组装成卫氏并殖吸虫的21,586个单基因和斯氏狸殖吸虫的25,825个单基因。许多单基因与其他食源性吸虫的序列具有同源性，但鉴定出了1217个高可信度的肺吸虫属特异性单基因。分析表明，这两个物种都具有有氧和无氧代谢的潜力，但没有从头脂肪酸生物合成能力，并且它们可能与宿主信号通路相互作用。约12,432个卫氏并殖吸虫和斯氏狸殖吸虫单基因在双向序列相似性匹配中显示出明显的对应关系。共享单基因的表达大多具有良好的相关性，但也鉴定出了差异表达的单基因，并且显示出卫氏并殖吸虫的差异表达单基因在蛋白水解相关功能上富集，而斯氏狸殖吸虫的差异表达单基因在基于微管的运动相关功能上富集。
本项目生成的卫氏并殖吸虫和斯氏狸殖吸虫的组装转录组、推断的蛋白质以及广泛的功能注释（包括与各种物种的已鉴定一级序列相似性、蛋白质结构域、生物学途径、预测的蛋白酶、分子模拟物和分泌蛋白等）代表了对这些具有医学和经济重要性的物种进行假设驱动研究的宝贵资源。
