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.
Project description:Chinese and Philippine strains of the blood fluke Schistosoma japonicum present clear and distinctive phenotypes in areas of fecundity, pathology, drug sensitivity and immunology. Despite these differences large scale sequencing efforts have focused solely on Chinese mainland strain of the parasite. We have undertaken a comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) approach to highlight some of the structural differences in the genome of two of the major geographical isolates of S. japonicum. We identified seven distinct regions of the S. japonicum genome that present differential CGH between Chinese and Philippine strains of the blood fluke Schistosoma japonicum, representing either deletion or duplication regions in the Philippine strain. Within these regions, genes that may be related to phenotypical differences are identified and discussed.
