Global transcriptome landscape of the rabbitprotozoan parasite Eimeria stiedae
Yue Xie, Jie Xiao, Xuan Zhou, Xiaobin Gu, Ran He, Jing Xu, Bo Jing, Xuerong PengandGuangyou Yang
Abstract
Background:Coccidiosis caused byEimeria stiedaeis a widespread and economically significant disease of rabbits.The lack of studies on the life-cycle development and host interactions ofE. stiedaeat the molecular level has hampered our understanding of its pathogenesis.
Methods:In this study, we present a comprehensive transcriptome landscape ofE. stiedaeto illustrate its dynamicdevelopment from unsporulated oocysts to sporulated oocysts, merozoites, and gametocytes, and to identify genesrelated to parasite-host interactions during parasitism using combined PacBio single-molecule real-time and IlluminaRNA sequencing followed by bioinformatics analysis and qRT-PCR validation.
Results:In total, 12,582 non-redundant full-length transcripts were generated with an average length of 1808 bpfrom the life-cycle stages ofE. stiedae. Pairwise comparisons between stages revealed 8775 differentially expressedgenes (DEGs) showing highly significant description changes, which compiled a snapshot of the mechanisms underlining asexual and sexual biology ofE. stiedaeincluding oocyst sporulation between unsporulated and sporulatedoocysts; merozoite replication between sporulated oocysts and merozoites; and gametophyte development andgamete generation between merozoites and gametocytes. Further, 248 DEGs were grouped into nine series clustersand five groups by expression patterns, and showed that parasite–host interaction-related genes predominated in
merozoites and gametocytes and were mostly involved in steroid biosynthesis and lipid metabolism and carboxylicacid. Additionally, co-expression analyses identified genes associated with development and host invasion in unsporulated and sporulated oocysts and immune interactions during gametocyte parasitism.
Conclusions:This is the first study, to our knowledge, to use the global transcriptome profiles to decipher molecularchanges across theE. stiedaelife cycle, and these results not only provide important information for the molecularcharacterization ofE. stiedae, but also offer valuable resources to study other apicomplexan parasites with veterinaryand public significance.
copyright:© The Author(s)
Parasites Vectors (2021) 14:308.doi.10.1186/s13071-021-04811-5
Read Full Text:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13071-021-04811-5
