Abstract
Schistosomes require both molluscan and mammalian hosts for development. The larval cercaria exits the snail host and swims to identify and invade the mammalian host. The cercaria has two macrostructures, the head and the tail. The head invades the host, where it matures into an adult worm. The tail is lost after host invasion. Translation in the cercaria differs in each macrostructure, with higher levels of translation in the cercarial tail and little to no translational activity in the cercarial head. We compared the transcriptome and proteome of the cercarial head and tail and observed stark differences between the two macrostructures. We identified unique and differentially expressed transcripts and proteins, including ribosomal components expressed in higher levels in tails than in heads, which may explain the differences in translation levels between heads and tails. We also characterized the weak correlation between transcription and translation in infectious cercarial heads and tails.
Highlights
Schistosomes require both molluscan and mammalian hosts for development
We found that cercarial heads and tails: (1) store distinct populations of proteins and transcripts which correlate to their functional roles as macrostructures, (2) differentially regulate translation using ribosomal component composition, and (3) have a weak correlation between transcript and protein abundance
The cercarial head develops into the adult worm and stores all the necessary transcripts and proteins necessary for initial entry and adaptation to the definitive host[14,15]
Summary
Schistosomes require both molluscan and mammalian hosts for development. The larval cercaria exits the snail host and swims to identify and invade the mammalian host. The cercaria is transiently freeliving and represents the first interaction point in the parasite life cycle with the human host This cercarial stage has been studied using several -omic approaches, including microarrays, RNA-seq, and proteomics; our understanding of this stage’s transcriptional and translational control mechanisms is still limited[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The uniquely identified proteins were not analyzed for relative differential expression and are reported separately from our expression analysis and are removed during the filtering in the spectral matching process of label-free quantitation These proteins are still of interest because they are only stored at detectable levels in a single macrostructure, either the head or the tail. Cercarial tails store a broader diversity of transcripts, while cercarial heads store a broader diversity of proteins
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