Effect of human TGF-β on the gene expression profile of Schistosoma mansoni adult worms

Abstract

Schistosoma mansoni is responsible for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that affects 200 million people worldwide. Molecular mechanisms of host-parasite interaction are complex and involve a crosstalk between host signals and parasite receptors. TGF-β signaling pathway has been shown to play an important role in S. mansoni development and embryogenesis. In particular human (h) TGF-β has been shown to bind to a S. mansoni receptor, transduce a signal that regulates the expression of a schistosome target gene. Here we describe 381 parasite genes whose expression levels are affected by in vitro treatment with hTGF-β. Among these differentially expressed genes we highlight genes related to morphology, development and cell cycle that could be players of cytokine effects on the parasite. We confirm by qPCR the expression changes detected with microarrays for 5 out of 7 selected genes. We also highlight a set of non-coding RNAs transcribed from the same loci of protein-coding genes that are differentially expressed upon hTGF-β treatment. These datasets offer potential targets to be explored in order to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the possible role of hTGF-β effects on parasite biology.