Project
Project #10700
Step by step one goes very far
Organisms :
Group : Name of Applicant : Nancy GUILLEN Date of application : 01-10-2017 Unit : Biology of Host-parasite Interactions Location : Calmette 1 etage Phone : 0145688675@ Mail : nguillen@pasteur.fr@ PI-Mail : ascherf@pasteur.fr
Project context and summary :
Entamoeba histolytica is a protozoan parasite and an amitochondriate pathogenic amoeba, which causes amoebiasis (dysentery and liver abscess) in humans. In addition to E. histolytica several species infect the human intestine although these do not cause disease and include in most of cases E. dispar and ocassionnally E. moshkovskii. A phylogenetically close Entamoeba, E. invadens infecting snails, is used as cellular model for Entamoeba cyst formation.
Supported by the National Agency for Research (ANR-10-GENM-0011) we developed a project to firstly study the transcriptional landscape of pathogenic E. histolytica. Among the results we discovered that 60% of ORFs present anti-sense RNAs (NATs) that map to the 3‘ end of genes. Their regulation is modified upon environmental changes. The regulation of NATs is basically governed by genomic sequences within the very short intragenic region of the amoeba genome. Secondly, we have started to conduct comparative genomics and transcriptomics approaches to understand phenotypic differences between Entamoeba species, in particular with respect to virulence.
