Annotation of the Transcriptome from Taenia pisiformis and Its Comparative Analysis with Three Taeniidae Species

BACKGROUND: Taenia pisiformis is one of the most common intestinal tapeworms and can cause infections in canines. Adult T. pisiformis (canines as definitive hosts) and Cysticercus pisiformis (rabbits as intermediate hosts) cause significant health problems to the host and considerable socio-economic losses as a consequence. No complete genomic data regarding T. pisiformis are currently available in public databases. RNA-seq provides an effective approach to analyze the eukaryotic transcriptome to generate large functional gene datasets that can be used for further studies. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this study, 2.67 million sequencing clean reads and 72,957 unigenes were generated using the RNA-seq technique. Based on a sequence similarity search with known proteins, a total of 26,012 unigenes (no redundancy) were identified after quality control procedures via the alignment of four databases. Overall, 15,920 unigenes were mapped to 203 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Through analyzing the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis and axonal guidance pathways, we achieved an in-depth understanding of the biochemistry of T. pisiformis. Here, we selected four unigenes at random and obtained their full-length cDNA clones using RACE PCR. Functional distribution characteristics were gained through comparing four cestode species (72,957 unigenes of T. pisiformis, 30,700 ESTs of T. solium, 1,058 ESTs of Eg+Em [conserved ESTs between Echinococcus granulosus and Echinococcus multilocularis]), with the cluster of orthologous groups (COG) and gene ontology (GO) functional classification systems. Furthermore, the conserved common genes in these four cestode species were obtained and aligned by the KEGG database. CONCLUSION: This study provides an extensive transcriptome dataset obtained from the deep sequencing of T. pisiformis in a non-model whole genome. The identification of conserved genes may provide novel approaches for potential drug targets and vaccinations against cestode infections. Research can now accelerate into the functional genomics, immunity and gene expression profiles of cestode species.