Project description:Retrospective analysis of RNAi hits derived from Wang et. al. has found that genes with greater transcripts-per-million (TPM) in S. mansoni are more likely to produce physical phenotypes. To create the best rate-of-return in our large-scale RNAi screen to identify essential schistosome genes that produce physical phenotypes, we quantified TPM of each gene expressed in male parasites after culturing them with female parasites for 72 hours.
Project description:A kinetic model of S. mansoni glycolysis in which we can vary the allosteric regulation on lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). Because not enough kinetic data are available for all the schistosome enzymes to construct a complete schistosome glycolysis model de novo, we here adjusted the well-established glycolysis model of the eukaryotic microbe Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Teusink et al., 2000; van Eunen et al., 2012; van Heerden et al., 2014). We removed reactions from the yeast model that are not used in schistosomes and added glycogen metabolism, a Krebs cycle, respiration and an allosterically regulated LDH that was parameterized on multiple in vitro kinetic data sets for schistosome LDH. Additional files are published on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/10401097
Project description:Nitric oxide (NO) is a gaseous intercellular signaling molecule that also plays a role in host-parasite relations. NO acts rapidly, either via regulation of soluble guanylate cyclase, or by direct interactions with enzymes and other proteins, and has also been shown to have effects on gene expression. Here, we use SAGE (Serial Analysis of Gene Expression) to identify NO-responsive changes in gene expression in Schistosoma mansoni following a 3 hour exposure to sodium nitroprusside, an NO donor. Overall, these results indicate that NO does not rapidly induce large-scale changes in schistosome gene expression, but that expression of particular genes of interest appear to respond to NO. Keywords: Schistosoma, SAGE, NOS, nitric oxide, gene expression Adult S. mansoni perfused from infected Swiss-Webster female mice (obtained from the NIAID Schistosomiasis Resource Center) 42-49 days postinfection were maintained in culture (RPMI medium) overnight and then exposed for 3 hours to either 1 mM sodium nitroprusside (SNP), a well-characterized NO donor, or to RPMI alone. Worms remained viable and motile following treatment. Total RNA was extracted with Trizol (Invitrogen) and treated with DNAse 1 (Ambion) to remove contaminating genomic DNA, and Long-SAGE libraries constructed.
Project description:Suppression subtractive hybridization(SSH) libraries of Schistosoma japanicum female and male worms were constructed by using Clontech PCR-selectTM cDNA subtraction kit. S.japonicum cDNA microarrays were fabricated using female and male cDNA clones originating from SSH libraries. female-associated and Male-associated differentially expressed gene clones were obtained, Analysis of gender-associated differentially expressed genes helps to determine which genes are important to sexual maturation of schistosome and better understand schistosome biology and host-parasite relationship, facilitate the discovery of novel gene products that could represent targets for the development of new drugs and vaccines to control chitosomiasis. Keywords: gender-associated