Giardia Secretome Highlights Secreted Tenascins as a Key Component of Pathogenesis

ABSTRACT: Giardia causes more episodes of illness worldwide than any other parasite. It is a flagellated cyst-forming enteric pathogen that inhabits the lumen of the small intestine and although it is clear that more and less virulent strains do occur, pathogenesis and virulence of Giardia remains poorly understood. Identification of Giardia virulence factors is highly desirable since their expression would be the best indicator for determining disease outcome. The advent of quantitative proteomics has been timely in investigating which proteins are likely to be secreted virulence factors. Here we successfully apply such analyses to the whole parasite and to the supernatants derived from the parasite, in order to ascertain a repertoire of secreted proteins. In our initial analysis we compared replicates of Giardia cells and culture supernatants from the two major lineages which cause human disease – assemblage A and assemblage B. The genome of Giardia is believed to contain open reading frames which could encode as many as 6000 proteins. In our study we confirm expression of ~1600 proteins from each assemblage, the vast majority of which being common to both lineages. To look for actual enrichment of secreted proteins, we considered the ratio of proteins in the supernatant compared with the pellet. This simple method defines a small group of enriched proteins, putatively secreted at a steady state by cultured growing Giardia trophozoites of both assemblages. This secretome contains a high proportion annotated to have N’ terminus signal peptides, with some showing evidence of having recently evolved under strong positive selective pressure. The most abundant secreted proteins include known virulence factors such as the Cathepsin B cysteine proteases and members of a Giardia superfamily of Cysteine Rich Proteins which comprises VSPs, HCMPs and a new class of virulence factors, the Giardia Tenascins. Since we also find that physiological function of human enteric epithelial cells can be disrupted by soluble factors even in the absence of the trophozoites we are able to propose a straightforward model of Giardia pathogenesis incorporating key roles for the major Giardia derived soluble mediators.

INSTRUMENT(S): LTQ Orbitrap Velos, Q Exactive

ORGANISM(S): Giardia Sp.

SUBMITTER: Dong Xia  

LAB HEAD: Jonathan Wastling

PROVIDER: PXD004398 | Pride | 2018-01-10

REPOSITORIES: Pride