Gene expression profiling of Schistosoma mansoni larval development using serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE)

Biomphalaria glabrata infection by the Schistosoma mansoni free-swimming miracidium and its subsequent development to the parasitic sporocyst stage is critical to establishment of viable infections and triggers a variety of physiological, biochemical and molecular changes. Here, we describe a genome-wide analysis of the S. mansoni miracidium and developing sporocyst. Keywords: life-cycle, development, host-interaction We generated transcriptomic profiles of the developing larval stages of Schistosoma mansoni using long serial analysis of gene expression (LongSAGE). Five cDNA libraries were constructed from miracidia and in vitro cultured 6- and 20-day old sporocysts maintained in sporocyst medium (SM) or in SM conditioned by previous cultivation with cells of the B. glabrata embryonic (Bge) cell line. From five libraries, 314,799 SAGE tags were sequenced and resulted in a total of 21,440 unique sequence tags. A total of 254 tags were differentially expressed during “conditioned” development and 236 tags were differentially expressed during “un-conditioned” development. In addition, 53 tags were found to be differentially expressed between 6-day conditioned and unconditioned sporocysts and 42 tags between 20-day conditioned and unconditioned sporocysts.