Transcriptomic analysis of extracellular stages of Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis.

Human cryptosporidiosis is caused primarily by two Cryptosporidium species, C. parvum and C. hominis. The enteric infection is frequent in infants living in developing regions. Cryptosporidium parasites are cultured in monolayers of epithelial cells. Gal-GalNAc has been shown to induce differentiation of sporozoites. To better understand parasite-host interaction in the presence of GalNAc, we analyzed the C. hominis and C. parvum transcriptome from oocysts and sporozites at 0h and 2h post-infection. The transcriptome of 5 replicate samples of C. parvum sporozoites were incubated in 10 uM of GalNac for 2 h, whereas 5 replicate samples of C. parvum sporozoites were incubated for 2 h in PBS. In addition, 2 samples incubated in 10 uM GalNAc for 0 h and 2 samples incubated with PBS for 0 hour were sequenced together with RNA from 2 C. hominis oocyst samples and a single C. parvum oocyst sample.