Genome and transcriptomes of Besnoitia besnoiti strain Lisbon14. Besnoitia besnoiti strain:Lisbon14

The coccidian parasite Besnoitia besnoiti causes bovine besnoitiosis and is considered emerging in Europe with an important economic impact in endemic regions. However, a definitive host of B. besnoiti, if any, and most importantly its exact mode of transmission remain elusive. Despite being closely related to T. gondii and N. caninum, the biology of B. besnoiti has a number of distinct features, including the presence of massive numbers of macroscopically detectable tissue cysts with bradyzoites in the cutis and the mucosa of infected animals.In an effort to perform a comparative in silico analysis with coccidian and haematozoan Apicomplexa, we generated the first genome sequence of B. besnoiti with 30 x coverage and 105 contigs.RNA-Seq analysis of in vitro cultivated tachyzoites and of tissue cysts isolated from a naturally infected cow showed very pronounced stage-specificity of gene expression with many canonical markers for tachyzoites and bradyzoites. B. besnoiti tissue cysts are highly tractable, which allows exploitation of this model to study tissue cyst development and interaction with the host environment.