Daily rhythms and enrichment patterns in the transcriptome of the behavior-manipulating parasite Ophiocordyceps kimflemingiae.

ABSTRACT: Various parasite-host interactions that involve adaptive manipulation of host behavior display time-of-day synchronization of certain events. One example is the manipulated biting behavior observed in Carpenter ants infected with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sensu lato. We hypothesized that biological clocks play an important role in this and other parasite-host interactions. In order to identify candidate molecular clock components, we used two general strategies: bioinformatics and transcriptional profiling. The bioinformatics approach was used to identify putative homologs of known clock genes. For transcriptional profiling, RNA-Seq was performed on 48 h time courses of Ophiocordyceps kimflemingiae (a recently named species of the O. unilateralis complex), whose genome has recently been

SUBMITTER: de Bekker C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5669440 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature