Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
School of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Dec 19;17(12):e0279103. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279103. eCollection 2022.
Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites that are known to infect most types of animals. Many species of microsporidia can infect multiple related hosts, but it is not known if microsporidia express different genes depending upon which host species is infected or if the host response to infection is specific to each microsporidia species. To address these questions, we took advantage of two species of Nematocida microsporidia, N. parisii and N. ausubeli, that infect two species of Caenorhabditis nematodes, C. elegans and C. briggsae. We performed RNA-seq at several time points for each host infected with either microsporidia species. We observed that Nematocida transcription was largely independent of its host. We also observed that the host transcriptional response was similar when infected with either microsporidia species. Finally, we analyzed if the host response to microsporidia infection was conserved across host species. We observed that although many of the genes upregulated in response to infection are not direct orthologs, the same expanded gene families are upregulated in both Caenorhabditis hosts. Together our results describe the transcriptional interactions of Nematocida infection in Caenorhabditis hosts and demonstrate that these responses are evolutionarily conserved.
微孢子虫是专性细胞内寄生虫，已知可感染大多数类型的动物。许多种微孢子虫可以感染多种相关宿主，但尚不清楚微孢子虫是否会根据感染的宿主物种表达不同的基因，或者宿主对感染的反应是否针对每种微孢子虫物种具有特异性。为了解决这些问题，我们利用了两种感染两种秀丽隐杆线虫（秀丽隐杆线虫和秀丽新小杆线虫）的 Nematocida 微孢子虫，N. parisii 和 N. ausubeli。我们对每种宿主感染的两种微孢子虫分别在几个时间点进行了 RNA-seq 分析。我们观察到，Nematocida 的转录在很大程度上与其宿主无关。我们还观察到，当感染两种微孢子虫时，宿主的转录反应相似。最后，我们分析了宿主对微孢子虫感染的反应是否在宿主物种之间保守。我们观察到，尽管许多响应感染而上调的基因不是直接的直系同源物，但相同的扩展基因家族在两种秀丽隐杆线虫宿主中都上调。我们的研究结果描述了 Nematocida 在秀丽隐杆线虫宿主中的转录相互作用，并证明了这些反应在进化上是保守的。
