Understanding the genomic context of noncoding RNA in the schistosome genome
Prof Matt Berriman, School of Infection and Immunity
Schistosomiasis is a major neglected tropical disease caused by blood flukes of the genus Schistosoma. Fundamental research into schistosomiasis is needed to inform the search for new approaches to disease intervention. Schistosoma mansoni is one of the clinically most important species, and the most widely studied. A high-quality genome reference has provided the foundation for large-scale studies of schistosome biology. Other schistosome species are less well studied, but they differ in their life cycles, within-host tropisms (and subsequent pathologies), prevalence and geospatial distributions. Reference genomes for 19 species from the Schistosomatidae family have now been sequenced.
Preliminary comparisons have revealed a striking degree of conservation at the level of gene repertoires, suggesting that much of the phenotypic differences between these species is driven by differences in expression of highly similar gene repertoires. Regulatory non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play an important role in regulating gene expression in many organisms, but their contribution to schistosome diversity has not been explored. In this project you will align the genome sequences of diverse schistosome species to define evolutionary conserved regions. Using existing data and structural approaches to predicting potential ncRNAs in these genomes you will explore the relationship between the evolution of ncRNAs and their expression in existing single-cell RNAseq data to develop a first understanding of their role in the diversity of schistosomes.
(Co-supervised by James Cotton)