Theileria parva schizont and piroplasm stages RNA sequencing

Theileria parva is a protozoan parasite that causes East Coast fever (ECF), an economically important disease of cattle in Africa. It is transmitted mainly by the tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus. The manifestation and propagation of the disease in infected animals are mainly due to the parasite life cycle stages within blood cells: the schizont that infects and reversibly transforms lymphocytes and the piroplasm that parasitizes red blood cells. A method of vaccination, whereby infection of cattle with live T. parva sporozoites is done simultaneously with treatment with long-acting oxytetracycline, was developed over 40 years ago. The Muguga Cocktail generates long-lasting immunity in vaccinated cattle against challenge with homologous T. parva stocks. However, vaccinated animals usually remain carriers of the vaccine parasite strains and a source of infections to ticks. Extensive efforts to develop alternative, more easily manufactured, subunit vaccines have met with limited successes. Therefore, it is imperative to identify more candidate vaccine antigens. A comparative transcriptome profiling of T. parva was previoulsy done on sporoblast, sporozoite and schizont stages but not on the piroplasm stage of the parasite. This study was then set up to extend the analysis of T. parva gene expression between the schizont and the piroplasm stages using the Illumina MiSeq next-generation sequencing platform and bioinformatics data analysis.