Project description:Genome-wide transcriptome analysis revealed extensive alternative RNA splicing in gene expression in the zoonotic parasite Schistosoma japonicum
Project description:Schistosomiasis is a parasitic zoonosis which caused by schistosomes and poses great threat to the health of human and other mammals. Schistosome cercaria must penetrate skin as an initial step to successfully infect the final host. Proteolytic enzymes secreted from the acetabular glands of cercaria contribute significantly to the invasion process. In this study, we designed a new cercaria transformation experiment to get the penetrated cercaria (schistosomula), then a gel-free shotgun proteomic analysis were performed to compare the proteomes of cercaria and schistosomula. 1894 and 1002 proteins were identified respectively, 924 proteins were common in both of two samples, almost take up 92% of the total proteins of schistosomula. The identified proteins were closely associated with nine main biological processes through Gene Ontology (GO) categorical analysis. The identification of the proteins potentially related to skin penetration offer a global overview of changes during cercaria skin invasion, providing clues into how they involve in the penetration process. Various proteases and peptidases were detected, and were differentially existed before and after cercaria transformation, suggesting proteases-specific roles and complexity mechanism during invasion.
Project description:It is well recognized that parasitic helminth infections, which afflict more than one billion people globally, correlate with a decreased prevalence of metabolic diseases, including obesity and type 2 diabetes, but the molecular mechanisms involved remain to be determined. Using microarrays, we quantified the temporal gene expression profiles in the liver of Schistosoma japonicum-infected C57BL/6 mice at 9 weeks post infection with that from uninfected mice as controls. More than 150 miRNAs were differentially expressed in the liver during S. japonicum infection, and miRNA-mRNA network would provide new evidence for the negtive correlation between S. japonicum infection and metabolism.