Cryptosporidium parvum strain:IPZ:CH-Crypto_K6769 Raw sequence reads

Cryptosporidium parvum is a zoonotic, apicomplexan parasite causing gastroenteritis in humans and livestock. Disease in calves and lambs can lead to considerable economic losses, but currently there are no vaccines or chemoprophylactics on the market, and the only few chemotherapeutics available have narrow therapeutic windows and/or low efficacy. In this study, we use RNA-Seq to compare C. parvum development in vitro with the natural cycle of the parasite in the calf intestine and with sporozoites from excreted oocysts. In vitro stages were cultured using human HCT-8 cells as host cells; these in vitro stages and the intestinal stages were isolated at 2 and 4 days post infection. Sporozoites were excysted from shed oocysts. We applied paired-end sequencing using the SOLiD4/5 platforms and analysed the differential expression using DESeq2. We thus identified factors important for successful asexual multiplication and sexual development.