Abstract
Upon invasion of red blood cells (RBCs), the Apicomplexa parasite Babesia divergens remains within the RBC for several hours and reproduces asexually, resulting in infective free merozoites that egress and destroy the host cell. Free merozoites rapidly seek and invade new uninfected RBCs. This repetitive cycle allows B. divergens to build a complex population of intraerythrocytic and extracellular stages in the bloodstream of humans and cattle, thus causing babesiosis. To compare biological aspects between B. divergens stages, including the different nature of their metabolism, could be key to our understanding of pathogenesis. Thus, we are currently assessing differences in the B. divergens metabolism of intra- and extracellular (free merozoites) life stages by the use of an integrative approach combining functional genomic, transcriptomic, differential expression, and metabolomic data acquired from sequencing and various analytical platforms. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to describe, in detail, the experimental procedures and integration of different omics to explore the regulation of the metabolism, invasion and proliferation mechanisms of B. divergens. This integrative approach can be used as a reference to study other Apicomplexa parasites.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to “Unidad de Secuenciación Masiva y Bioinformática” of the “Laboratorio Nacional de Apoyo Tecnológico a las Ciencias Genómicas,” CONACyT #260481, at the Instituto de Biotecnologíaa/UNAM for sequencing and bioinformatics support. We thank Centro de Transfusiones de la Comunidad de Madrid that provided the human A+ blood from healthy volunteer donors. This work was supported by grants from Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) from Spain (AGL2014-56193 R to EM and LMG) and Health Institute Carlos III (PI20CIII/00037 to EM and LMG a grant from the Health Institute Carlos III (PI20CIII/00037 to EM and LGM) and a grant from Ministerio de Ciencías, Innovación y Universidades (MICINM) from Spain (RTI2018-095166-B-I00 to CB, AG, MFRS and MFG) from Spain and European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). ES was awarded a research fellowship from Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación, MINECO, Spain Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spain. MFG was awarded a research fellowship from Fundación Universitaria San Pablo CEU, Spain.
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Fernández-Garcia, M. et al. (2021). Integration of Functional Genomic, Transcriptomic, and Metabolomic Data to Identify Key Features in Genomic Expression, Metabolites, and Metabolic Pathways of Babesia divergens. In: de Pablos, L.M., Sotillo, J. (eds) Parasite Genomics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2369. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1681-9_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1681-9_13
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