Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Aug 7:10:708.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2019.00708. eCollection 2019.

Revisiting the Phylogenetic History of Helminths Through Genomics, the Case of the New Echinococcus oligarthrus Genome

Affiliations

Revisiting the Phylogenetic History of Helminths Through Genomics, the Case of the New Echinococcus oligarthrus Genome

Lucas L Maldonado et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

The first parasitic helminth genome sequence was published in 2007; since then, only ∼200 genomes have become available, most of them being draft assemblies. Nevertheless, despite the medical and economical global impact of helminthic infections, parasite genomes in public databases are underrepresented. Recently, through an integrative approach involving morphological, genetic, and ecological aspects, we have demonstrated that the complete life cycle of Echinococcus oligarthrus (Cestoda: Taeniidae) is present in South America. The neotropical E. oligarthrus parasite is capable of developing in any felid species and producing human infections. Neotropical echinococcosis is poorly understood yet and requires a complex medical examination to provide the appropriate intervention. Only a few cases of echinococcosis have been unequivocally identified and reported as a consequence of E. oligarthrus infections. Regarding phylogenetics, the analyses of mitogenomes and nuclear datasets have resulted in discordant topologies, and there is no unequivocal taxonomic classification of Echinococcus species so far. In this work, we sequenced and assembled the genome of E. oligarthrus that was isolated from agoutis (Dasyprocta azarae) naturally infected and performed the first comparative genomic study of a neotropical Echinococcus species. The E. oligarthrus genome assembly consisted of 86.22 Mb which showed ∼90% identity and 76.3% coverage with Echinococcus multilocularis and contained the 85.0% of the total expected genes. Genetic variants analysis of whole genome revealed a higher rate of intraspecific genetic variability (23,301 SNPs; 0.22 SNPs/kb) rather than for the genomes of E. multilocularis and Echinococcus canadensis G7 but lower with respect to Echinococcus granulosus G1. Comparative genomics against E. multilocularis, E. granulosus G1, and E. canadensis G7 revealed 38,762, 125,147, and 170,049 homozygous polymorphic sites, respectively, indicating a higher genetic distance between E. oligarthrus and E. granulosus sensu lato species. The SNP distribution in chromosomes revealed a higher SNP density in the longest chromosomes. Phylogenetic analysis using whole-genome SNPs demonstrated that E. oligarthrus is one of the basal species of the genus Echinococcus and is phylogenetically closer to E. multilocularis. This work sheds light on the Echinococcus phylogeny and settles the basis to study sylvatic Echinococcus species and their developmental evolutionary features.

Keywords: Echinococcus oligarthrus; chromosomes; genome; parasites; phylogeny; single nucleotide polymorphism.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in Echinococcus chromosomes. Density of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs/Mb) by chromosome 1–9 among E. oligarthrus, E. multilocularis, E. canadensis G7, and E. granulosus G1 species.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Echinococcus phylogenetic tree based on genome-wide nuclear single nucleotide polymorphisms. Phylogenetic tree was constructed using BEAST software using (A) GTR + C + I model from four full genome SNPs sequences. (B) Transversional substitution model (TVMef) from four full genome SNPs sequences.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Venn diagram of shared loci between the different Echinococcus species using E. multilocularis (A) and E. oligarthrus (B) as reference. The numbers under each species name indicate the number of SNPs in the species against the corresponding reference genome. The numbers in the overlap region indicate the number of SNPs with the same polymorphism at the same locus between the species analyzed.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Arrabal J. P., Avila H. G., Rivero M. R., Camicia F., Salas M. M., Costa S. A., et al. (2017). Echinococcus oligarthrus in the subtropical region of Argentina: first integration of morphological and molecular analyses determines two distinct populations. Vet. Parasitol. 240, 60–67. 10.1016/j.vetpar.2017.03.019 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ashburner M., Ball C. A., Blake J. A., Botstein D., Butler H., Cherry J. M., et al. (2000). Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology. Nat. Genet. 25, 25–29. 10.1038/75556 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bankevich A., Nurk S., Antipov D., Gurevich A. A., Dvorkin M., Kulikov A. S., et al. (2012). SPAdes: a new genome assembly algorithm and its applications to single-cell sequencing. J. Comput. Biol. 19, 455–477. 10.1089/­cmb.2012.0021 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Barnett D. W., Garrison E. K., Quinlan A. R., Strömberg M. P., Marth G. T. (2011). BamTools: a C++ API and toolkit for analyzing and managing BAM files. Bioinformatics 27, 1691–1692. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr174 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Birney E., Clamp M., Durbin R. (2004). GeneWise and genomewise. Genome Res. 14, 988. 10.1101/gr.1865504 - DOI - PMC - PubMed