寄生虫相对于自由生活的生物在许多方面需发生适应其寄生生活方式的适应性进化。这在其营养吸收消化和能量代谢等方面表现尤为突出。因此通过寄生虫与自由生活的物种（特别是与其近缘种）的比较，则能较明确发现这些适应性进化现象。血吸虫与营自由生活的涡虫是由共同的扁形动物祖先因适应不同生活方式而分化形成的目前已知的相对近缘的两类生物。本项目拟基于二者的基因组、蛋白质组等数据库并结合实验对它们的消化酶系和能量代谢途径进行全面鉴定、重建和系统的比较分析研究，旨在揭示血吸虫在这些方面的基因、蛋白乃至整个途径上所发生的适应性进化现象及其发生的机制和规律。同时，由于发生了适应性进化的基因/分子/途径对血吸虫成功的寄生生活十分关键，因而还拟根据分子靶标的原则标准，对这些发生了适应性进化的基因/分子（如代谢的酶）是否可作为防治血吸虫的有效靶标进行初步鉴定，为研发高效、特异的防治血吸虫病的新药物、疫苗提供线索和数据基础。

Compared with free-living organisms, parasites have undergone much adaptive evolution in many aspects, especially in their nutrition,digestion and energy metabolism. Therefore, by comparing parasites with free-living organisms, espcially with their free-living relatives, the parasitic adaptive evolution phenomena can be more easily found. Schistosome and free-living planaria are relatively closed relatives diverged from a common ancestor due to different life styles. In this project, based on the genome and proteome databases of these two kinds of organisms and by experiments, we are going to identify and reconstruct their digestive enzymes and energy metabolic pathways, and further comprehansively compare them between these two kinds of organisms to reveal the adaptive evolution occurred on schistosome in the genes, protein (enzyme) molecules and the entire pathways of these aspects,including the mechanisms and rules of this evolution. On the other hand, because these gene/molecules (enzymes) with adaptive evolution have key roles to the successful parasitism of schistosome, thus we also evalue these gene/molecules to see whether they can be candidate targets for developing drugs or vaccines against this parasite.