Parasites and Microbes Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton, United Kingdom.
Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2021 Mar 1;11:604129. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2021.604129. eCollection 2021.
The crossing of the mosquito midgut epithelium by the malaria parasite motile ookinete form represents the most extreme population bottleneck in the parasite life cycle and is a prime target for transmission blocking strategies. However, we have little understanding of the clonal variation that exists in a population of ookinetes in the vector, partially because the parasites are difficult to access and are found in low numbers. Within a vector, variation may result as a response to specific environmental cues or may exist independent of those cues as a potential bet-hedging strategy. Here we use single-cell RNA-seq to profile transcriptional variation in ookinetes across different vector species, and between and within individual midguts. We then compare our results to low-input transcriptomes from individual midguts infected with the human malaria parasite . Although the vast majority of transcriptional changes in ookinetes are driven by development, we have identified candidate genes that may be responding to environmental cues or are clonally variant within a population. Our results illustrate the value of single-cell and low-input technologies in understanding clonal variation of parasite populations.
疟原虫能动的合子型穿过蚊子中肠上皮，代表了寄生虫生命周期中最极端的种群瓶颈，也是阻断传播策略的主要目标。然而，我们对蚊子种群中合子的克隆变异知之甚少，部分原因是寄生虫难以获取，数量也很少。在媒介中，变异可能是对特定环境线索的反应，也可能独立于这些线索存在，作为一种潜在的风险分担策略。在这里，我们使用单细胞 RNA-seq 技术来描述不同媒介物种以及个体中肠内合子的转录变异性。然后，我们将我们的结果与个体中肠感染人类疟原虫的低输入转录组进行比较。尽管合子中绝大多数转录变化是由发育驱动的，但我们已经确定了可能对环境线索做出反应或在种群内具有克隆变异的候选基因。我们的结果说明了单细胞和低输入技术在理解寄生虫种群的克隆变异方面的价值。
