Follow up of a robust meta-signature to identify Zika virus infection in Aedes aegypti: another brick in the wall.

The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the main vector of several arthropod-borne diseases that have global impacts. In a previous meta-analysis, our group identified a vector gene set containing 110 genes strongly associated with infections of dengue, West Nile and yellow fever viruses. Of these 110 genes, four genes allowed a highly accurate classification of infected status. More recently, a new study of Ae. aegypti infected with Zika virus (ZIKV) was published, providing new data to investigate whether this "infection" gene set is also altered during a ZIKV infection. Our hypothesis is that the infection-associated signature may also serve as a proxy to classify the ZIKV infection in the vector. Raw data associated with the NCBI/BioProject were downloaded and re-analysed. A total of 18 paired-end replicates corresponding to three ZIKV-infected samples and three controls were included in this study. The nMDS technique with a logistic regression was used to obtain the probabilities of belonging to a given class. Thus, to compare both gene sets, we used the area under the curve and performed a comparison using the bootstrap method. Our meta-signature was able to separate the infected mosquitoes from the controls with good predictive power to classify the Zika-infected mosquitoes.

Follow up of a robust meta-signature to identify Zika virus infection in Aedes aegypti: another brick in the wall

The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the main vector of several arthropod-borne diseases that have global impacts. In a previous meta-analysis, our group identified a vector gene set containing 110 genes strongly associated with infections of dengue, West Nile and yellow fever viruses. Of these 110 genes, four genes allowed a highly accurate classification of infected status. More recently, a new study of Ae. aegypti infected with Zika virus (ZIKV) was published, providing new data to investigate whether this "infection" gene set is also altered during a ZIKV infection. Our hypothesis is that the infection-associated signature may also serve as a proxy to classify the ZIKV infection in the vector. Raw data associated with the NCBI/BioProject were downloaded and re-analysed. A total of 18 paired-end replicates corresponding to three ZIKV-infected samples and three controls were included in this study. The nMDS technique with a logistic regression was used to obtain the probabilities of belonging to a given class. Thus, to compare both gene sets, we used the area under the curve and performed a comparison using the bootstrap method. Our meta-signature was able to separate the infected mosquitoes from the controls with good predictive power to classify the Zika-infected mosquitoes.

Investigação sobre uma atividade potenciadora da infecção murina por leishmania braziliensis exercida por moléculas parasitárias hidrossolúveis

Os protozoários do gênero Leishmania são parasitos intracelulares que causam um conjunto de doenças, as leishmanioses, em milhões de pessoas no mundo. As leishmanias secretam moléculas que modulam o sistema imune do hospedeiro, contribuindo para o estabelecimento da infecção por interferirem na atividade microbicida do macrófago. Os objetivos desse trabalho foram identificar proteínas de Leishmania com atividade imunomoduladora e caracterizar essa imunomodulação. No trabalho foram avaliados os efeitos potenciadores de polipeptídeos da cinesina recombinante de Leishmania infantum, do extrato de Leishmania braziliensis (ELb) e de frações purificadas do extrato de Leishmania amazonensis (ELa), tratados ou não com inibidores de serina ou cisteína proteases, sobre a infecção por L. braziliensis, em camundongos BALB/c. Os animais foram acompanhados semanalmente, durante 6 semanas pós infecção, para a mensuração dos tamanhos das lesões. Após a eutanásia foi realizada a diluição limitante das lesões, a quantificação das concentrações de IL-4 e IL-10 da cultura em leucócitos estimulados com anti-CD3 e a semiquantificação de IgG1 e IgG2a do soro. Frações do ELa foram processadas por técnicas de espectrometria de massas para identificação de proteínas. Foi observado que frações de pesos moleculares aparentes de 28, 36, 45, 68 kDa do ELa foram capazes de potenciar a infecção por L. braziliensis, assim como um polipeptídeo da cinesina recombinante de L. infantum com motivos repetitivos e ELb contendo 5 µg de proteína. Quando as frações de 28 e 68 kDa foram tratadas com os inibidores de serina proteases, elas perderam a capacidade de potenciar a infecção por L. braziliensis, apesar de não terem sido identificadas serina proteases nessas frações por espectrometria de massas.