Annotation of G-Protein Coupled Receptors in the Genomes of Parasitic Blood Flukes

Abstract

Infection with Schistosoma parasitic flatworms ( Schistosoma haematobium, Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma japonicum ) causes the neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis. There is a need to identify new chemotherapies to treat these parasites, and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a logical druggable targets to explore given they control key aspects of schistosome biology such as neuromuscular function and reproduction. Updated chromosome level genome assemblies for each of the three major species have recently been released. However, studies on these GPCRs require accurate, updated genome annotations. Here, we have re-annotated the GPCRs present in each of the three major schistosome species.

Figure 1. GPCRs of all three major schistosome species.

A. Number of GPCRs by class and subclass for all three major schistosome species. For S. mansoni , annotation of GPCRs identified in prior analysis of the v5 genome assembly (Hahnel et al., 2018) is compared to the annotation of the v9 genome in this study. B. Phylogenetic tree of schistosome Class A GPCRs. Sequences were aligned with MUSCLE and TrimAI was used to remove poorly aligned sequences and degap the alignment. IQ-TREE was then used to generate a maximum likelihood phylogeny (1000 bootstrap replicates). ★ = GPCR has been experimentally deorphanized.