Transcriptome Profiling of the Human Pathogen Schistosoma japonicum

由血吸虫属的人类血吸虫引起的寄生虫病血吸虫病是非洲、拉丁美洲和东南亚的主要公共卫生问题。目前的控制方法还远不理想，全面了解允许染色体在其宿主内生长、发育和存活的遗传机制为鉴定新的药物和疫苗靶点提供了最好的前景。微阵列技术允许同时监测数千个不同的基因，并确定它们在何处以及何时活跃，从而将基因组测序程序产生的大量数据置于生物和功能背景中。微阵列为研究染色体生物学提供了独特的尖端工具。我们已经制作了一个代表大约20，000个染色体基因的微阵列。我们将利用这一资源进行大规模的监测，在寄生虫的复杂的生命周期中，靶向区域重要的亚洲血吸虫，日本血吸虫，基因表达的研究。这将提供对寄生虫发育过程中发生的遗传变化的最大洞察力，将大大促进我们对寄生虫生长，发育和生存所需的适应性的理解，并将确定参与关键生物过程的基因，所有这些都可能用于未来的干预和治疗。

The parasitic disease, schistosomiasis, caused by human bloodflukes of the genus Schistosoma, is a major public health issue in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia. Current control methods are far from ideal, and a comprehensive understanding of the genetic mechanisms which allow schistosomes to grow, develop and survive within their hosts affords the best prospect for identifying new drug and vaccine targets. Microarray technology allows simultaneous monitoring of thousands of different genes, and to determine where and when they are active, thus placing the mass of data generated by genome sequencing programs into a biological and functional context. Microarrays provide a unique, cutting-edge, tool for investigating schistosome biology. We have fabricated a microarray representing some 20,000 schistosome genes. We will use this resource to perform large scale monitoring of schistosome gene expression during the parasite's complex life cycle, targetting the regionally important Asian schistosome, Schistosoma japonicum, for study. This will provide the single largest insight into the genetic changes that occur during schistosome development, will greatly further our understanding of the adaptations needed for the growth, development and survival of the parasite, and will identify genes involved in key biological processes, all of which may be exploitable for future interventions and treatments.