Eman Alshehri
University of Liverpool, UK
Title: Comparative and functional genomics analysis of T. gondii and N. Caninum
Biography
Biography: Eman Alshehri
Abstract
Recent comparative analysis of T. gondii and the closely related N. caninum has identified a set of species-specific genes in T. gondii. These species-specific genes are largely hypothetical proteins with no predicted function. However, in other parasites such species-specific genes are often associated with host interaction and therefore we hypothesis that these genes are play an important role in infection to infect a wide range of vertebrate hosts and to avoid the host immune response. Understanding the distribution of these genes within species will also be of interest as genes that are evolving rapidly may be expected to vary among strains, similar to Var genes in Plasmodium or VSG genes in trypanosomes. In this study, we identified 300 species-specific genes in T. gondii and 60 species-specific genes in N. caninum. Most of our findings were hypothetical proteins and there were some ribosomal proteins and GRA11 that may play an important role in wide range host in T. gondii that was absent in N. caninium.