Biomphalaria snails are instrumental in transmission of the human blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni. With the World Health Organization's goal to eliminate schistosomiasis as a global health problem by 2025, there is now renewed emphasis on snail control. Here, we characterize the genome of Biomphalaria glabrata, a lophotrochozoan protostome, and provide timely and important information on snail biology. We describe aspects of phero-perception, stress responses, immune function and regulation of gene expression that support the persistence of B. glabrata in the field and may define this species as a suitable snail host for S. mansoni. We identify several potential targets for developing novel control measures aimed at reducing snail-mediated transmission of schistosomiasis.
Biological networks
are often used to represent complex biological
systems, which can contain several types of entities. Analysis and
visualization of such networks is supported by the Cytoscape software
tool and its many apps. While earlier versions of stringApp focused
on providing intraspecies protein–protein interactions from
the STRING database, the new stringApp 2.0 greatly improves the support
for heterogeneous networks. Here, we highlight new functionality that
makes it possible to create networks that contain proteins and interactions
from STRING as well as other biological entities and associations
from other sources. We exemplify this by complementing a published
SARS-CoV-2 interactome with interactions from STRING. We have also
extended stringApp with new data and query functionality for protein–protein
interactions between eukaryotic parasites and their hosts. We show
how this can be used to retrieve and visualize a cross-species network
for a malaria parasite, its host, and its vector. Finally, the latest
stringApp version has an improved user interface, allows retrieval
of both functional associations and physical interactions, and supports
group-wise enrichment analysis of different parts of a network to
aid biological interpretation. stringApp is freely available at .
The study of molecular host–parasite interactions is essential to understand parasitic infection and adaptation within the host system. As well, prevention and treatment of infectious diseases require a clear understanding of the molecular crosstalk between parasites and their hosts. Yet, large-scale experimental identification of host–parasite molecular interactions remains challenging, and the use of computational predictions becomes then necessary. Here, we propose a computational integrative approach to predict host—parasite protein—protein interaction (PPI) networks resulting from the human infection by 15 different eukaryotic parasites. We used an orthology-based approach to transfer high-confidence intraspecies interactions obtained from the STRING database to the corresponding interspecies homolog protein pairs in the host–parasite system. Our approach uses either the parasites predicted secretome and membrane proteins, or only the secretome, depending on whether they are uni- or multi-cellular, respectively, to reduce the number of false predictions. Moreover, the host proteome is filtered for proteins expressed in selected cellular localizations and tissues supporting the parasite growth. We evaluated the inferred interactions by analyzing the enriched biological processes and pathways in the predicted networks and their association with known parasitic invasion and evasion mechanisms. The resulting PPI networks were compared across parasites to identify common mechanisms that may define a global pathogenic hallmark. We also provided a study case focusing on a closer examination of the human–
S. mansoni
predicted interactome, detecting central proteins that have relevant roles in the human–
S. mansoni
network, and identifying tissue-specific interactions with key roles in the life cycle of the parasite. The predicted PPI networks can be visualized and downloaded at
http://orthohpi.jensenlab.org
.
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