The Serotonin effect in the neuromuscular function of Echinococcus granulosus and other cestodes: potential role serotonergic GPCRs

FEDERICO CAMICIA; HUGO VACA; SERGIO H. SIMONETTA; LAURA KAMENETZKY; LUCAS MALDONADO; MARA C. ROSENZVIT

Mar del Plata, Provincia de Buenos Aires

Congreso; XX Anual Meeting and SAN-ISN Small Conference and Course; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Investigacion en Neurociencias

Cestode parasites are a diverse group of organisms, many of them are cause of neglected zoonoses with major impact in local health and global economy. The adecuate nerve function is essential for the parasitic way of life and is a target for cestocide drugs. Genomic and transcriptomic data of E. granulosus (Tsai et al., 2013) and experimental results showing the motor response to serotonin (5-­‐HT) of the larval stage (Camicia et al., 2013) suggest the existence of serotonergic GPCRs in this parasite. In this work, we propose the existence of an important role for 5-­‐HT in the neuromuscular function of cestode parasites and that the observed stimulatory effect could be mediated by serotonergic GPCRs. The bioinformatics search of this kind of receptors in cestode parasites such as Mesocestoides corti, Taenia solium, E. granulosus and Echinococcus multilocularis resulted in the interesting finding of conserved sequences with amino acid identity with serotonergic GPCRs. The addition of 5-­‐HT to the larval stages of M. corti and Taenia crassiceps resulted in the stimulation of the motility measured by light scattering and imaging techniques in a dose dependent mode. The motility curves showed a specific response to the neurotransmitter according to the species in question and this result suggests the intervention of different types of serotonergic GPCRs for each species. The identification of survival genes will be of great impact for the development of cestocide drugs.