Cattle as natural host for Schistosoma haematobium (Bilharz, 1852) Weinland, 1858 x Schistosoma bovis Sonsino, 1876 interactions, with new cercarial emergence and genetic patterns.

Schistosomiasis remains a parasitic infection which poses serious public health consequences around the world, particularly on the African continent where cases of introgression/hybridization between human and cattle schistosomiasis are being discovered on a more frequent basis in humans, specifically between Schistosoma haematobium and S. bovis. The aim of this paper is to analyze the occurrence of S. bovis in cattle and its relationship with S. haematobium in an area where cattle and humans share the same site in Benin (West Africa). We used the chronobiology of cercarial emergence as an ecological parameter and both molecular biology (COI mtDNA and ITS rDNA) of the larvae and morphology of the eggs as taxonomic parameters. The results showed a chronobiological polymorphism in the cercarial emergence rhythm. They showed for the first time the presence of S. bovis in Benin, the presence of introgressive hybridization between S. bovis and S. haematobium in domestic cattle, and the presence of atypical chronobiological patterns in schistosomes from cattle, with typical S. haematobium shedding pattern, double-peak patterns, and nocturnal patterns. Our results showed that the chronobiological life-history trait is useful for the detection of new hosts and also may reveal the possible presence of introgressive hybridization in schistosomes. Our results, for the first time, place cattle as reservoir host for S. haematobium and S. bovis x S. haematobium. The consequences of these results on the epidemiology of the disease, the transmission to humans, and the control of the disease are very important.

Automated ChIPmentation procedure on limited biological material of the human blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni.

In living cells, the genetic information stored in the DNA sequence is always associated with chromosomal and extra-chromosomal epigenetic information. Chromatin is formed by the DNA and associated proteins, in particular histones. Covalent histone modifications are important bearers of epigenetic information and as such have been increasingly studied since about the year 2000. One of the principal techniques to gather information about the association between DNA and modified histones is chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), also combined with massive sequencing (ChIP-Seq). Automated ChIPmentation procedure is a convenient alternative to native chromatin immunoprecipitation (N-ChIP). It is now routinely used for ChIP-Seq in many model species, using in general roughly 10 6 cells per experiment. Such high cell numbers are sometimes difficult to produce. Using the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni, whose production requires sacrificing animals and should therefore be kept to a minimum, we show here that automated ChIPmentation is suitable for limited biological material. We define the operational limit as ≥20,000 Schistosoma cells. We also present a streamlined protocol for the preparation of ChIP input libraries.