Check out the resource described in “CeMbio – The Caenorhabiditis elegans Microbiome Resource“.
Check out the WormBase paper in NAR
If you’d like to read about the latest developments at WormBase—literature curation efforts, features about the web interface, data mining options for users, and how WormBase as a founding member, interacts with the Alliance of Genome Resources to aid in cross-species data comparisons, check out our paper in Nucleic Acids Research.
New chapter in WormBook (GENETICS): The Caenorhabditis elegans Transgenic Toolbox
Check out this useful chapter ‘The Caenorhabditis elegans Transgenic Toolbox‘ by Jeremy Nance and Christian Frøkjær-Jensen in the latest issue of WormBook, GENETICS.
Featured Paper: Allergy the Price of Immunity
We would like to draw your attention to a paper recently published in PLOS Computational Biology: Comparisons of Allergenic and Metazoan Parasite Proteins: Allergy the Price of Immunity by Nidhi Tyagi, et. al.
It is thought that part of our immune system has evolved to combat and provide immunity against infection by parasitic worms. However, in the absence of parasitic infection, this same arm of the immune system can become hyper-responsive and mistakenly target allergenic proteins in food or the environment. This results in an unregulated allergic response, which can sometimes be lethal.
The researchers used computational techniques to predict which proteins in parasitic worms would cause an immune response similar to an allergic reaction in humans. Their experimental studies supported these predictions and, for the first time, they identified a protein in a parasitic worm that is similar to a protein that was previously thought to be encoded only in the genomes of plants. This protein is one of the most common proteins in pollen that causes allergy in humans.
The paper and its associated Brugia malayi and Onchocerca volvulus genes are part of the WS252 release of WormBase.
(Reproduced from the WormBase Parasite blog).
WS249: Parasite Papers II
For the upcoming WS249 release, a set of new papers have been added to the WormBase database. Some papers of interest to the parasite community are shown below.
Rateb ME, Yang D, Vodanovic-Jankovic S, Yu Z, Kron MA, Shen B.Adipostatins A-D from Streptomyces sp. 4875 inhibiting Brugia malayi asparaginyl-tRNA synthetase and killing adult Brugia malayi parasites. J Antibiot (Tokyo). 2015
Referenced Genes: Bma-nars-2
Yang Y, Wen Yj, Cai YN, Vallée I, Boireau P, Liu MY, Cheng SP.Serine proteases of parasitic helminths. Korean J Parasitol. 2015 Feb;53(1):1-11.
Referenced Genes: Bm10893, Bm4862, OVOC9258, OVOC9605
O’Connell EM, Bennuru S, Steel C, Dolan MA, Nutman TB.Targeting Filarial Abl-like Kinases: Orally Available, Food and Drug Administration-Approved Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors Are Microfilaricidal and Macrofilaricidal. J Infect Dis. 2015 Feb 5.