Transcriptional profiling of Schistosoma mansoni male parasites after culturing with female parasites for 72 hours

Retrospective analysis of RNAi hits derived from Wang et. al. has found that genes with greater transcripts-per-million (TPM) in S. mansoni are more likely to produce physical phenotypes. To create the best rate-of-return in our large-scale RNAi screen to identify essential schistosome genes that produce physical phenotypes, we quantified TPM of each gene expressed in male parasites after culturing them with female parasites for 72 hours. Male parasites were cultured for 72 hours with female parasites in rich media (Basch 169 media + abscorbic acid, red blood cells, and cholesterol). Male parasites were then separated from female parasites prior to RNA extraction. RNA was then subjected to mRNA-seq.