Korean J Parasitol.  2013 Oct;51(5):525-530.

Comparison of Functional Gene Annotation of Toxascaris leonina and Toxocara canis using CLC Genomics Workbench

• Kim KU
• Park SK
• Kang SA
• Park MK
• Cho MK
• Jung HJ
• Kim KY
• Yu HS

Abstract

The ascarids, Toxocara canis and Toxascaris leonina, are probably the most common gastrointestinal helminths encountered in dogs. In order to understand biological differences of 2 ascarids, we analyzed gene expression profiles of female adults of T. canis and T. leonina using CLC Genomics Workbench, and the results were compared with those of free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. A total of 2,880 and 7,949 ESTs were collected from T. leonina and T. canis, respectively. The length of ESTs ranged from 106 to 4,637 bp with an average insert size of 820 bp. Overall, our results showed that most functional gene annotations of 2 ascarids were quite similar to each other in 3 major categories, i.e., cellular component, biological process, and molecular function. Although some different transcript expression categories were found, the distance was short and it was not enough to explain their different lifestyles. However, we found distinguished transcript differences between ascarid parasites and free-living nematodes. Understanding evolutionary genetic changes might be helpful for studies of the lifestyle and evolution of parasites.

Keyword

Toxascaris leonina; Toxocara canis; Caenorhabditis elegans; Gene ontology; CLC genomics workbench

MeSH Terms

Animals
Dog Diseases/*parasitology
Dogs
Female
*Genomics
Molecular Sequence Annotation
Toxascariasis/parasitology/*veterinary
Toxascaris/*genetics/metabolism
Toxocara canis/*genetics/metabolism
Toxocariasis/*parasitology