The genome of Eimeria falciformis - reduction and specialization in a single host apicomplexan parasite

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Christoph Dieterich¹  Emanuel Heitlinger²  Simone Spork²  Richard Lucius² 

[1] Computational RNA Biology and Ageing, Max Plank Institute for Biology of Ageing, Joseph-Stelzmann Straße 9b, 50913, Cologne, Germany;Department of Molecular Parasitology, Humboldt University, Philippstraße 13, 10115, Berlin, Germany;

关键词: Gene Ontology;    Protein Code Gene;    Parasitophorous Vacuole;    Apicomplexan Parasite;    Eimeria Species;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-15-696

 received in 2014-01-15, accepted in 2014-07-19,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe phylum Apicomplexa comprises important unicellular human parasites such as Toxoplasma and Plasmodium. Eimeria is the largest and most diverse genus of apicomplexan parasites and some species of the genus are the causative agent of coccidiosis, a disease economically devastating in poultry. We report a complete genome sequence of the mouse parasite Eimeria falciformis. We assembled and annotated the genome sequence to study host-parasite interactions in this understudied genus in a model organism host.ResultsThe genome of E. falciformis is 44 Mb in size and contains 5,879 predicted protein coding genes. Comparative analysis of E. falciformis with Toxoplasma gondii shows an emergence and diversification of gene families associated with motility and invasion mainly at the level of the Coccidia. Many rhoptry kinases, among them important virulence factors in T. gondii, are absent from the E. falciformis genome. Surface antigens are divergent between Eimeria species. Comparisons with T. gondii showed differences between genes involved in metabolism, N-glycan and GPI-anchor synthesis. E. falciformis possesses a reduced set of transmembrane transporters and we suggest an altered mode of iron uptake in the genus Eimeria.ConclusionsReduced diversity of genes required for host-parasite interaction and transmembrane transport allow hypotheses on host adaptation and specialization of a single host parasite. The E. falciformis genome sequence sheds light on the evolution of the Coccidia and helps to identify determinants of host-parasite interaction critical for drug and vaccine development.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Heitlinger et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.