Publication details
How can we better understand host-parasite interactions?
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Host-parasite interactions are formed in time as a result of the complex co-evolutionary processes between the two interacting species, i.e. host and its parasite. Defense mechanisms which are involved in host-parasite interactions are genetically encoded in the genomes of the both host and parasite. Therefore, the recent growth of interest in studying the genome-for-genome interactions has become critical to understand the host-parasite interactions at the molecular level. As a result, there has been recently a boom in the genome and transcriptome characterization of the both parasite and host species which may help us in better understanding of gene’s structure and function as well as their possible role in host-parasite interactions. In our study, we firstly aimed to study de novo the transcriptome (a set of genes transcribed in a given tissue under specific conditions) of the two non-model fish species - Barbus barbus and Barbus meridionalis. Together, four B. barbus and B. meridionalis individuals were collected on the Pertuis and Céze Rivers (southern France). The mRNA was obtained from the different tissues of each individual (i.e. brain, fin, liver, spleen, intestine and gills) to compare tissue-specific expression patterns. Subsequently, cDNA libraries were prepared for both Illumina MiSeq a HiSeq platforms. So far, high data quality sequences were obtained from Illumina MiSeq platform (Figure 1). Using the knowledge of the transcriptome structure in the Barbus fishes will help us to select different genes that play potentially an important role in the defensive mechanisms of the host immune system. Moreover, comparison of the expression level of these genes in link with the different level of parasite infection is planned for the near future. However, this will be only one piece of puzzle to better understand the host-parasite interactions since there is a need to explore the genetic mechanisms for parasite strategy to infect and survive in its host. |
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