Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum

Schistosomiasis, a chronic disease caused by agents of the genus Schistosoma, still afflicts more than 230 million people worldwide. The genomes of the three major pathogenic blood flukes, Schistosoma japonicum, Schistosoma mansoni, and Schistosoma haematobium, have been decoded as valuable entities...

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Main Authors:	Cai, Pengfei, Piao, Xianyu, Hou, Nan, Liu, Shuai, Wang, Heng, Chen, Qijun
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2012
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409120/

id	pubmed-3409120
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-34091202012-08-02 Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum Cai, Pengfei Piao, Xianyu Hou, Nan Liu, Shuai Wang, Heng Chen, Qijun Research Article Schistosomiasis, a chronic disease caused by agents of the genus Schistosoma, still afflicts more than 230 million people worldwide. The genomes of the three major pathogenic blood flukes, Schistosoma japonicum, Schistosoma mansoni, and Schistosoma haematobium, have been decoded as valuable entities for a systematic dissection of the biological characteristics of the parasites. Transposable elements constitute a major component in the genome of schistosomes and have been recognized as remnants of evolutionary events, but some of them are still active today. Thereby, the activity of these active mobile genetic elements should be restricted by elaborate mechanisms to protect genome stability. Our study showed that one of the three S. japonicum Argonaute proteins, SjAgo2, is involved in such mechanisms. By using specific mAb, native SjAgo2 protein was immunoisolated from a soluble adult worm antigen preparation, and its associated small RNAs were extracted for deep sequencing. We found that SjAgo2 is mainly associated with particular types of retrotransposon-derived siRNAs. For instance, siRNAs generated from 10 classes of well-defined retrotransposons were significantly enriched in the SjAgo2-specific libraries. Thus, a major function of Ago2 in S. japonicum is proposed to be the maintenance of genome stability via retrotransposon suppression. Our findings advance understanding of the putative gene regulatory mechanisms in a flatworm parasite. Public Library of Science 2012-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3409120/ /pubmed/22860145 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001745 Text en © 2012 Cai et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Cai, Pengfei Piao, Xianyu Hou, Nan Liu, Shuai Wang, Heng Chen, Qijun
spellingShingle	Cai, Pengfei Piao, Xianyu Hou, Nan Liu, Shuai Wang, Heng Chen, Qijun Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
author_facet	Cai, Pengfei Piao, Xianyu Hou, Nan Liu, Shuai Wang, Heng Chen, Qijun
author_sort	Cai, Pengfei
title	Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
title_short	Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
title_full	Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
title_fullStr	Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
title_full_unstemmed	Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum
title_sort	identification and characterization of argonaute protein, ago2 and its associated small rnas in schistosoma japonicum
description	Schistosomiasis, a chronic disease caused by agents of the genus Schistosoma, still afflicts more than 230 million people worldwide. The genomes of the three major pathogenic blood flukes, Schistosoma japonicum, Schistosoma mansoni, and Schistosoma haematobium, have been decoded as valuable entities for a systematic dissection of the biological characteristics of the parasites. Transposable elements constitute a major component in the genome of schistosomes and have been recognized as remnants of evolutionary events, but some of them are still active today. Thereby, the activity of these active mobile genetic elements should be restricted by elaborate mechanisms to protect genome stability. Our study showed that one of the three S. japonicum Argonaute proteins, SjAgo2, is involved in such mechanisms. By using specific mAb, native SjAgo2 protein was immunoisolated from a soluble adult worm antigen preparation, and its associated small RNAs were extracted for deep sequencing. We found that SjAgo2 is mainly associated with particular types of retrotransposon-derived siRNAs. For instance, siRNAs generated from 10 classes of well-defined retrotransposons were significantly enriched in the SjAgo2-specific libraries. Thus, a major function of Ago2 in S. japonicum is proposed to be the maintenance of genome stability via retrotransposon suppression. Our findings advance understanding of the putative gene regulatory mechanisms in a flatworm parasite.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2012
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409120/
_version_	1611546736367501312

Identification and Characterization of Argonaute Protein, Ago2 and Its Associated Small RNAs in Schistosoma japonicum

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