Biomphalaria glabrata transcriptome: identification of cell-signalling, transcriptional control and immune-related genes from open reading frame expressed sequence tags (ORESTES).
Biomphalaria glabrata is the major intermediate snail host for Schistosoma mansoni, one of the important schistosomes infecting man. Much remains to be discovered concerning specific molecules mediating the defence events in these intermediate hosts, triggered by invading schistosomes. An expressed sequence tag (EST) gene discovery strategy known as ORESTES has been employed to identify transcripts that might be involved in snail-schistosome interactions in order to examine gene expression patterns in infected B. glabrata. Over 3930 ESTs were sequenced from cDNA libraries made from both schistosome-exposed and unexposed snails using different tissue types, producing a database of 1843 non-redundant clones. The non-redundant set has been assessed for gene ontology and KEGG pathway assignments. This approach has revealed a number of signalling, antioxidant and immune-related gene homologues that, based on current understanding of molluscan and other comparative systems, might play an important role in the molluscan defence response towards infection.
Lockyer
Anne E
AE
Wolfson Wellcome Biomedical Laboratory, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. a.lockyer@nhm.ac.uk
Spinks
Jennifer N
JN
Walker
Anthony J
AJ
Kane
Richard A
RA
Noble
Leslie R
LR
Rollinson
David
D
Dias-Neto
Emmanuel
E
Jones
Catherine S
CS
D000818:Animals; D001700:Biomphalaria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000469:parasitology; D019295:Computational Biology; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015870:Gene Expression; D015698:Genomic Library; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012550:Schistosoma mansoni; D015398:Signal Transduction; D014158:Transcription, Genetic