INVESTIGADORES
CUCHER Marcela Alejandra
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Cestode parasites release extracellular vesicles containing small RNAs in a stage-dependent manner
Autor/es:
ANCAROLA ME; LICHTENSTEIN, GABRIEL; HERBIG J; HOLROYD, N; MARICONTI, M; BRUNETTI, E; BERRIMAN M; ALBRECHT K; MARCILLA A; ROSENZVIT M; KAMENETZKY L; BREHM K; CUCHER M
Lugar:
Cape Cod
Reunión:
Congreso; Molecular Helminthology 2021 Virtual Meeting; 2021
Resumen:
Cestodes are helminth parasites that affect almost all vertebrate species and cause severe neglected diseases in humans, such as echinococcosis and cysticercosis. To achieve a successful infection, cestodes can interact with their hosts and modify the environment through secretion of molecules by different pathways that may involve the release of extracellular vesicles (EV). EV are membranous non-replicative structures that carry different cargoes, such as small regulatory RNAs and particularly microRNAs. Currently, diseases caused by cestodes lack robust biomarkers for early and/or follow up diagnosis, and thus the particular repertoire of cestode EV may represent a potential novel diagnostic tool. In this work, we evaluated EV secretion by larval stages of different cestode species and analyzed their protein and RNAcontent. We observed that EV release to the extra-parasite environment may depend on the morphological traits of the larval stage under study and this can condition the secretion pathway favored by the parasite throughout its life cycle. When analyzing the protein content we found that cestode EV mostly carry proteins typically found in EV from model organisms and other helminth parasites, proteins that where evaluated as immunodiagnostic markers for echinococcosis and/or cysticercosis and proteins with no formal annotation and of unknown function. With respect to the RNA content, we observed that cestode EV transport small RNAs with < 200 nt and we detected the presence of microRNAs in all samples. However, parasite microRNAs could not be detected circulating in serum/plasma from patients with echinococcosis. Our results suggest that cestode parasites employ different secretion mechanisms according to the larval stage characteristics or the state of development. This could be relevant in the search of new diagnostic biomarkers since efforts should be focused on those molecules with higher chances to be detected circulating in host body fluids.