Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology

Comparative and functional genomics analysis of T. gondii and N. Caninum

2^nd International Conference on Parasitology

August 01-03, 2016 Manchester, UK

Eman Alshehri, Christiana Hertz and Neil Hall

University of Liverpool, UK
The Earlham Institute, UK

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Bacteriol Parasitol

Abstract:

Recent comparative analyses of Toxoplasma gondii and the closely related Neospora caninum have identified genes specific to each of the species (Reid et al., 2012). These species-specific genes are largely encoded proteins of unknown function. However, in other parasites such species-specific genes proteins can be associated with host interaction and therefore we hypothesis that these genes are play an important role in the parasite�??s ability to infect a wide range of vertebrate hosts and to avoid the host immune response. We re-examined the comparison between T. gondii and N. caninum and identified 300 species-specific genes in T. gondii and 60 speciesspecific genes in N. canium, extending on previously published data. Most of our findings were hypothetical proteins, ribosomal and dense granule proteins GRA11 that may play an important role in wide range host in T. gondii. However, in N. caninum, we identified additional members of the surface- antigen gene family (SRSs). SRSs proteins are thought to mediate attachment to host cells and activate host immunity to regulate the parasites virulence. We postulate that the SRS genes may mediate the more limited host range of N. caninum.

Biography :

Eman Alshehri is currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Genomics in T. gondii and N. caninum at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Email: e.a.ealshehri@liverpool.ac.uk