ISSN: 2161-1165

Epidemiology: Open Access
Open Access

Our Group organises 3000+ Global Conferenceseries Events every year across USA, Europe & Asia with support from 1000 more scientific Societies and Publishes 700+ Open Access Journals which contains over 50000 eminent personalities, reputed scientists as editorial board members.

Open Access Journals gaining more Readers and Citations
700 Journals and 15,000,000 Readers Each Journal is getting 25,000+ Readers

This Readership is 10 times more when compared to other Subscription Journals (Source: Google Analytics)
  • Research Article   
  • Epidemiology (Sunnyvale) 2015, Vol 5(2): 189
  • DOI: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000189

Susceptibility of Snails to Infection with Schistosomes is influenced by Temperature and Expression of Heat Shock Proteins

Matty Knight1,3*, Elhelu O1, Smith M1, Haugen B1, Miller A2, Raghavan N2, Wellman C1, Cousin C1, Dixon F1, Mann V3, Rinaldi G3, Ittiprasert W2 and Brindley PJ3
1University of the District of Columbia, 4200 Connecticut Ave, Washington, D.C. 20008, USA
2Schistosomiasis Resource Center, Biomedical Research Institute, , 12111 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, USA
3Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, George Washington University, 2300 Eye Street NW, Washington, D.C, USA
*Corresponding Author : Matty Knight, Immunology & Tropical Medicine, and Research Center for the Neglected Diseases of Poverty, Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, George Washington University, 2300 Eye Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20037, USA, Tel: +8613882198624, Email: matty_knight@gwu.edu

Received Date: May 20, 2015 / Accepted Date: Jun 17, 2015 / Published Date: Jun 21, 2015

Abstract

The freshwater snail, Biomphalaria glabrata is the obligate intermediate host for the transmission of the parasitic trematode, Schistosoma mansoni – the causative agent of the chronic debilitating neglected tropical disease, schistosomiasis. We showed previously that in juvenile snails, early and significant induction of stress manifested by the expression of stress proteins, Hsp 70, Hsp 90 and reverse transcriptase (RT) of the non- LTR retrotransposon, nimbus, is a characteristic feature of juvenile susceptible NMRI but not resistant BS-90 snails. These latter, however, could be rendered susceptible after mild heat shock at 32°C, revealing that resistance in the BS-90 resistant snail to schistosomes is a temperature dependent trait. Here we tested the hypothesis that maintenance of BS-90 resistant snails at the permissive temperature for several generations affects the resistance phenotype displayed at the nonpermissive temperature of 25°C. The progeny of BS-90 snails bred and maintained through several generations (F1 to F4) at 32°C were susceptible to the schistosome infection when returned to room temperature, shedding cercariae at four weeks post-infection. Moreover, the study of expression levels of the heat shock protein (Hsp) 70 protein by ELISA and western blot analysis, showed that this protein is also differentially expressed between susceptible and resistant snails, with susceptible snails expressing more protein than their resistant counterparts after early exposure to wild-type but not to radiation-attenuated miracidia. These data suggested that in the face of global warming, the ability to sustain a reduction in schistosomiasis by using refractory snails as a strategy to block transmission of the disease might prove challenging since non-lethal elevation in temperature, affects snail susceptibility to S. mansoni.

Keywords: Biomphalaria glabrata; Schistosoma mansoni; Resistant BS-90 snails; Susceptibility; Global warming

Citation: Knight M, Elhelu O, Smith M, Haugen B, Miller A, et al. (2015) Susceptibility of Snails to Infection with Schistosomes is influenced by Temperature and Expression of Heat Shock Proteins. Epidemiology (sunnyvale) 5:189. Doi: 10.4172/2161-1165.1000189

Copyright: © 2015 Knight M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Top