Comparative transcriptomic analysis of the larval and adult stages of Dibothriocephalus dendriticus (Cestoda: Diphyllobothriidea)

Abstract

Tapeworms of the genus Dibothriocephalus are widely distributed throughout the world, some of which are agents of human diphyllobothriasis, one of the most important sh-borne zoonoses caused by a cestode parasite. Genomic and transcriptomic data can be used to develop future diagnostic tools and epidemiological studies. The present work focuses on a comparative analysis of the transcriptomes of adult and plerocercoid D. dendriticus and the identi cation of their differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Transcriptome assembly and analysis yielded and annotated 35129 unigene, noting that 16568 (47%) unigene were not annotated in known databases, which may indicate a unique set of expressed transcripts for D. dendriticus. A total of 8022 differentially expressed transcripts were identi ed, including 3225 upregulated and 4797 downregulated differentially expressed transcripts from the plerocercoid and adult animals. The analysis of DEGs has shown that among the most differentially expressed genes there are important genes characteristic of each stage. Thus, several genes are characteristic of D. dendriticus plerocercoides, including fatty acid-binding protein and ferritin. Among the most highly expressed DEGs of the adult stage of D. dendriticus is the Kunitz-type serine protease inhibitor, in two putative isoforms. The analyses of GO and KEGG metabolic pathways revealed that a large number of the DEGs of D. dendriticus are associated with the biosynthesis of various substances such as arginine and folate, as well as with various metabolic pathways such as galactose metabolism, selenocompound metabolism, phosphonate and phosphinate metabolism. This will contribute to further research aimed at identifying targets for new generation drugs and the development of speci c vaccines.

Re‐evaluation of certain aspects of the EFSA Scientific Opinion of April 2010 on risk assessment of parasites in fishery products, based on new scientific data. Part 1: ToRs1–3

“…D (Palomba, Libro, et al., 2023 ). In cestodes, transcriptomics has been performed to date in plerocercoid and the adult stage of Dibothriocephalus dendriticus (Sidorova et al., 2023 ).…”

Genome-wide transcriptome analysis of Echinococcus multilocularis larvae and germinative cell cultures reveals genes involved in parasite stem cell function

“…No comparable investigations have yet been carried out on stem cell systems of cestodes, except one study in which bulk transcriptomic analyses on X-ray treated adult worms of Hymenolepis diminuta identified genes potentially associated with cycling stem cells ( Rozario et al., 2019 ). Other studies addressed the general protein encoding transcriptomic profiles of larvae and/or adult worms of H. microstoma ( Olson et al., 2018 ; Preza et al., 2021 ), Mesocestoides corti ( Basika et al., 2019 ), Sparganum proliferum ( Kikuchi et al., 2021 ), Dibothriocephalus dendriticus ( Sidorova et al., 2023 ), Taenia pisiformis ( Zhang, 2019 ), and T. multiceps ( Li et al., 2017 ). In Echinococcus , transcriptomic studies so far concentrated on E. multilocularis oncospheres ( Huang et al., 2016 ), on different aspects of E. granulosus protoscoleces ( Liu et al., 2017 ; Fan et al., 2020 ; Mohammadi et al., 2021 ; Yu et al., 2021 ; Pereira et al., 2022 ), or on the effects of electroporation on early E. multilocularis primary cell cultures ( Pérez et al., 2022 ).…”