寄生蠕虫遗传操纵的研究进展

Advances of genetic manipulations in helminth parasites

全球约20亿人感染蠕虫,由此导致的蠕虫病是发展中国家的严重健康负担。寄生蠕虫是一类多细胞寄生虫,主要包括吸虫、绦虫和线虫,其生活史复杂,有多个发育时期且一般具有1个或多个宿主。从分子层面理解寄生蠕虫的生长、发育及其致病与传播的机理对于诊断和治疗蠕虫病具有重要意义。遗传操纵技术能够改变靶基因的表达水平,极大地促进了生物医学领域的研究。近年来,随着寄生蠕虫基因组信息的释放,遗传操纵技术,如RNA干扰、规律成簇间隔短回文重复序列(clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,CRISPR)基因编辑等在寄生蠕虫中的应用愈加广泛。本文对重要医学蠕虫中的遗传操纵进展、遗传操纵的方式及手段进行了综述,以期为寄生蠕虫的基因功能研究提供参考。

Approximately 2 billion people worldwide are infected with helminths and the resulting helminthiasis is a heavy health burden for developing countries.Parasitic helminths are a class of multicellular parasites,mainly including trematodes,tapeworms and nematodes,wtih complex life cycle involving multiple developmental stages and typically one or more hosts.Understanding the growth,development,pathogenesis and transmission of these parasites at the molecular level is of great significance for the diagnosis and treatment of helminthiasis.Genetic manipulations,which alter the expression level of target genes,have greatly promoted the biomedical research.In recent years,with the release of genomic data of worms,genetic manipulation techniques,such as RNA interference and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR)gene editing,have been increasingly applied in the studies of parasitic helminths.This article reviews the progress of genetic manipulations in important medical worms,as well as the methods of genetic manipulations,which would be expected to inspire the future functional study in parasitic helminths.