Spherical Body Protein 2 truncated copy 11 as a specific  Babesia bovis  attenuation marker

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Translated abstract

Background

Bovine babesiosis caused by Babesia bovis is a tick-borne hemoparasitic disease of global impact, and improved control is needed. In B. bovis, spherical body protein 2 (SBP -2) truncated copies 7, 9 and 11 ( sbp2t7, sbp2t9 and sbp2t11) gene transcripts were recently reported to be significantly upregulated in two geographically distinct attenuated B. bovis strains. In the present work, additional virulent and attenuated B. bovis strain pairs were compared in order to corroborate this finding.

Results

Sequences of the sbp2t7, sbp2t9 and sbp2t11 genes were not fully conserved among geographically distinct B. bovis strains, and varied between 70.6–93.3% sequence identity in all three genes. Comparisons among transcript levels of the three sbp2t genes of distinct virulent-attenuated B. bovis strain pairs confirmed that upregulation of the sbp2t11 gene was exclusively associated with an attenuated phenotype in the studied strain pairs. This rejects sbp2t7 and sbp2t9 as reliable attenuation markers. In addition, SBP2t11 protein was found to be significantly overexpressed in Texas attenuated B. bovis in comparison to the Texas virulent strain. Finally, sbp2t11 was differentially expressed in blood stages of the parasite but undetectable in Texas strain kinetes.

Conclusions

Sbp2t11 is a strong candidate as a reliable attenuation marker for B. bovis, based on its consistent pattern of upregulation in four distinct attenuated strains when compared to their virulent parental strains. Sbp2t11 may only have functional roles associated with erythrocyte infection. Identification of attenuation markers will lead to future research focused on the production of novel and safer subunit and genetically defined vaccines against B. bovis.

Related collections

Most cited references 18

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Babesiosis of cattle

R Bock, William Jackson, A de Vos … (1999)

0 comments Cited 143 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Babesia bovis: continuous cultivation in a microaerophilous stationary phase culture.

M Ristic, M. Levy (1980)

The protozoan parasite Babesia bovis, a causative agent of bovine babesiosis, has been continuously cultivated in a settled layer of bovine erythrocytes. Lowered oxygen tension within the layer of host erythrocytes results in a darkening of infected cultures and provides a rapid means of evaluating parasite growth. Deprivation of carbon dioxide causes the merozoites to accumulate in the medium rather than involving new erythrocytes. When separated from the culture, these extraerythrocytic parasites retain their infectivity. Parasites produced in vitro are morphologically identical to parasites from the blood of infected cattle and are susceptible to antibabesial drugs.

0 comments Cited 57 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Comparative transcriptome analysis of geographically distinct virulent and attenuated Babesia bovis strains reveals similar gene expression changes through attenuation

Monica J Pedroni, Kerry S Sondgeroth, Gina M Gallego-Lopez … (2013)

Background Loss of virulence is a phenotypic adaptation commonly seen in prokaryotic and eukaryotic pathogens. This mechanism is not well studied, especially in organisms with multiple host and life cycle stages such as Babesia, a tick-transmitted hemoparasite of humans and animals. B. bovis, which infects cattle, has naturally occurring virulent strains that can be reliably attenuated in vivo. Previous studies suggest the virulence loss mechanism may involve post-genomic modification. We investigated the transcriptome profiles of two geographically distinct B. bovis virulent and attenuated strain pairs to better understand virulence loss and to gain insight into pathogen adaptation strategies. Results Expression microarray and RNA-sequencing approaches were employed to compare transcriptome profiles of two B. bovis strain pairs, with each pair consisting of a virulent parental and its attenuated derivative strain. Differentially regulated transcripts were identified within each strain pair. These included genes encoding for VESA1, SmORFs, undefined membrane and hypothetical proteins. The majority of individual specific gene transcripts differentially regulated within a strain were not shared between the two strains. There was a disproportionately greater number of ves genes upregulated in the virulent parental strains. When compared with their attenuated derivatives, divergently oriented ves genes were included among the upregulated ves genes in the virulent strains, while none of the upregulated ves genes in the attenuated derivatives were oriented head to head. One gene family whose specific members were consistently and significantly upregulated in expression in both attenuated strains was spherical body protein (SBP) 2 encoding gene where SBP2 truncated copies 7, 9 and 11 transcripts were all upregulated. Conclusions We conclude that ves heterodimer pair upregulation and overall higher frequency of ves gene expressions in the virulent strains is consistent with the involvement of this gene family in virulence. This is logical given the role of VESA1 proteins in cytoadherence of infected cells to endothelial cells. However, upregulation of some ves genes in the attenuated derivatives suggests that the consequence of upregulation is gene-specific. Furthermore, upregulation of the spherical body protein 2 gene family may play a role in the attenuated phenotype. Exactly how these two gene families may contribute to the loss or gain of virulence is discussed.

0 comments Cited 35 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Gina M. Gallego-Lopez: gina.gallegolopez@wsu.edu

Audrey O. T. Lau: Audrey.lau@nih.gov

Wendy C. Brown: wbrown@vetmed.wsu.edu

Wendell C. Johnson: cjohnson@vetmed.wsu.edu

Massaro W. Ueti: massaro.ueti@ARS.USDA.gov

Carlos E. Suarez: ces@vetmed.wsu.edu

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Parasit Vectors

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Parasit Vectors

Title: Parasites & Vectors

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1756-3305

Publication date (Electronic): 12 March 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 12 March 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 11

Electronic Location Identifier: 169

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 6568, GRID grid.30064.31, Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology, , College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University, ; Pullman, WA 99164-7040 USA

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2164 9667, GRID grid.419681.3, The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institutes of Health, ; Rockville, MD 20852 USA

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 0404 0958, GRID grid.463419.d, Animal Disease Research Unit, , Agricultural Research Service, USDA, ; Pullman, WA 99164-6630 USA

Article

Publisher ID: 2782

DOI: 10.1186/s13071-018-2782-z

PMC ID: 5848574

PubMed ID: 29530085

SO-VID: b8fdf239-dc76-44f5-aa74-552a1a2cb1ff

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

History

Date received : 22 November 2017

Date accepted : 6 March 2018

Funding

Funded by: ARS-USDA

Award ID: 2090-32000-039-00D.

Funded by: Washington State University, College of Veterinary Medicine

Funded by: Francisco Jose de Caldas Scholarship from Colciencias-Colombia.

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Parasitology

Keywords: babesia bovis,spherical body protein,transcription,pexel,protein expression,attenuation marker

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Parasitology

Keywords: babesia bovis, spherical body protein, transcription, pexel, protein expression, attenuation marker

Spherical Body Protein 2 truncated copy 11 as a specific Babesia bovis attenuation marker

Read this article at

Translated abstract

Related collections

Malaria vaccine development

Most cited references 18

Babesiosis of cattle

Babesia bovis: continuous cultivation in a microaerophilous stationary phase culture.

Comparative transcriptome analysis of geographically distinct virulent and attenuated Babesia bovis strains reveals similar gene expression changes through attenuation

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Article

History

Funding

Categories

Custom metadata

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 20

Cited by 9

Most referenced authors 158