Novel insights into the transcriptome of Dirofilaria immitis.
BACKGROUND
The heartworm Dirofilaria immitis is the causal agent of cardiopulmonary dirofilariosis in dogs and cats, and also infects a wide range of wild mammals as well as humans. One bottleneck for the design of fundamentally new intervention and management strategies against D. immitis may be the currently limited knowledge of fundamental molecular aspects of D. immitis.


RESULTS
A next-generation sequencing platform combining computational approaches was employed to assess a global view of the heartworm transcriptome. A total of 20,810 unigenes (mean length  =  1,270 bp) were assembled from 22.3 million clean reads. From these, 15,698 coding sequences (CDS) were inferred, and about 85% of the unigenes had orthologs/homologs in public databases. Comparative transcriptomic study uncovered 4,157 filarial-specific genes as well as 3,795 genes potentially involved in filarial-Wolbachia symbiosis. In addition, the potential intestine transcriptome of D. immitis (1,101 genes) was mined for the first time, which might help to discover 'hidden antigens'.


CONCLUSIONS
This study provides novel insights into the transcriptome of D. immitis and sheds light on its molecular processes and survival mechanisms. Furthermore, it provides a platform to discover new vaccine candidates and potential targets for new drugs against dirofilariosis.
Department of Parasitology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China.
Yan
Y
Fu
Jingchao
J
Lan
Zhihe
Z
Zhang
Rong
R
Hou
Xuhang
X
Wu
Deying
D
Yang
Runhui
R
Zhang
Wanpeng
W
Zheng
Huaming
H
Nie
Yue
Y
Xie
Ning
N
Yan
Zhi
Z
Yang
Chengdong
C
Wang
Li
L
Luo
Li
L
Liu
Xiaobin
X
Gu
Shuxian
S
Wang
Xuerong
X
Peng
Guangyou
G
Yang
D000818:Animals; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D019295:Computational Biology; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D004183:Dirofilaria immitis / Q000235:genetics*; D004285:Dogs; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005260:Female; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D017238:Genes, Helminth / Q000235:genetics; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions / Q000235:genetics; D007422:Intestines / Q000469:parasitology; D008297:Male; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics*
D012333:RNA, Messenger