Sunday, August 24, 2014

This Month in Blastocystis Research (AUG 2014)

Some August highlights in Blastocystis research:

1) The PRE-IOPCA Molecular Parasitology Workshop took place from the 7-10 August at CINVESTAV, Mexico City. Top-motivated students from some 10-15 countries worked hard from 7 am to 7 pm in dry+wet lab sessions, and we all had a really great time, thanks to both participants and fantastic organisers. There was a 4 h session on Blastocystis molecular epidemiology, and I was pleased to learn that some of the participants currently work with (or plan to work with) Blastocystis. I look forward to doing something similar in Ankara, Turkey on the 27th of May next year (www.blastomeeting2015.com - did you bookmark it?).

Most of the task force of the Molecular Parasitology Workshop (ICOPA 2014).
2) At the actual ICOPA conference, I chaired a session on Blastocystis in the context of IBS, with talks delivered by Ken Boorom, Pablo Maravilla, Pauline Scanlan and myself. In the audience I was honoured to see and meet Dr Hisao Yoshikawa, who has been a main contributor to Blastocystis research over the past 25 years or so (you can look up the publications by Dr Yoshikawa here). Considering the focus of this post, I guess that Pauline's talk was of particular interest, since she presented the data that we just published in FEMS Microbiology and Ecology:

3) The microbial eukaryote Blastocystis is a prevalent and diverse member of the healthy human gut microbiota. That's the title of the paper appearing in FEMS Microbiology and Ecology. The study, led by Pauline, showed that Blastocystis was present in 56% of 105 healthy adults, which is much higher than previously reported from an industrialised county (Ireland). Moreover, a diversity of different subtypes (species) were detected and Blastocystis was present in a subset of individuals sampled over a period of time between six and ten years, indicating that it is capable of long-term host colonisation. These observations show that Blastocystis is a common and diverse member of the healthy gut microbiota, thereby extending our knowledge of the microbial ecology of the healthy human intestine. And one of the interesting things here is: Why do we see this great divide? Why does half of the population appear colonised while the other half not? What are the factors driving successful Blastocystis colonisation? Would some people be refractory to colonisation or does it really boil down to some sort of enterotype-driven phenomenon as previously indicated?

4) I would like to reiterate the paper by Klimes et al. published a study in Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) on a striking finding in the Blastocystis nuclear genome. Stop codons created by mRNA polyadenylation have been seen so far in mitochondrial genomes only and not in nuclear genomes; however, the authors observered this feature in Blastocystis's nuclear genome. Partly due to limitations of currently available annotation software, this finding ostensibly calls for reannotation of the genome currently available in GenBank (ST7). The paper was highlighted in a separate article in GBE that can be accessed from here.

5) Speaking of Blastocystis genomes: The genome of Blastocystis ST4 (WR1 strain) is now available on-line and can be accessed here.

6) Wang and colleagues studied the location and pathogenic potential of Blastocystis in the porcine intestine. They studied a total of 28 pigs from a commercial piggery, a small animal farm, and a research facility, and all pigs were positive (for ST5, and mixed subtypes were also seen in some). Post-mortem analyses showed that all pigs were consistently found to harbour Blastocystis in the colon, and approximately 90% of the caeca and rectums examined were positive. Some of the pigs were immunosuppresed (Dexamethasone), and interestingly, Blastocystis was occasionally detected in the small intestine, notably in immunosuppressed pigs, suggesting that immunosuprression may alter host-agent relations and predispose to small intestinal colonisation. Histopathological analysis saw the presence of vacuolar and granular forms of Blastocystis, but there was no evidence of attachment or invasion of the intestinal epithelium. The lack of pathology, including inflammation, epithelial damage, mucosal sloughing, and lamina propria oedema, confirmed the trend from a previous study carried out by Ron Fayer's group (see reference below). The study adds to the string of papers finding no evidence in support for Blastocystis causing primary intestinal damage.

6) Lastly, I want to extend a cordial thank you to Shashiraja Padukone and Subhash Chandra Parija, Department of Microbiology, Jipmer, Puducherry, India, for writing up a review of my 'Thoughts on Blastocystis' available on Amazon for the price of only one US$ or so. The review was published recently in Tropical Parasitology and can be accessed here.

And, for those who are worried about researchers 'overselling' microbiome research, there is a small comment in Nature calling for sound scepticism to be applied to research dealing with the relationship between the microbiome and different types of diseases. There is much to be agreed upon, and what I find particularly important, is to take the reductionist approach where possible - in terms of Blastocystis there are lots of ways to study the impact of Blastocystis on bacteria in vitro, and also host microbiota, physiology and immunology in vivo; ways that can be controlled quite diligently. Also, I think that simple validation of methods applied to map e.g. intestinal microbiota is key. This is for some reason something that is generally being utterly and completely ignored. Why?

References 

Fayer R, Elsasser T, Gould R, Solano G, Urban J Jr, & Santin M (2014). Blastocystis tropism in the pig intestine. Parasitology Research, 113 (4), 1465-72 PMID: 24535732

Hanage, W. (2014). Microbiology: Microbiome science needs a healthy dose of scepticism Nature, 512 (7514), 247-248 DOI: 10.1038/512247a

Klimeš V, Gentekaki E, Roger AJ, & Eliáš M (2014). A large number of nuclear genes in the human parasite blastocystis require mRNA polyadenylation to create functional termination codons. Genome Biology and Evolution, 6 (8), 1956-61 PMID: 25015079

Scanlan PD, Stensvold CR, Rajilić-Stojanović M, Heilig HG, De Vos WM, O'Toole PW, & Cotter PD (2014). The microbial eukaryote Blastocystis is a prevalent and diverse member of the healthy human gut microbiota. FEMS Microbiology Ecology PMID: 25077936 

Venton, D. (2014). Highlight: Not Like a Textbook--Nuclear Genes in Blastocystis Use mRNA Polyadenylation for Stop Codons Genome Biology and Evolution, 6 (8), 1962-1963 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evu167

Wang W, Bielefeldt-Ohmann H, Traub RJ, Cuttell L, & Owen H (2014). Location and pathogenic potential of Blastocystis in the porcine intestine. PloS One, 9 (8) PMID: 25093578 

Friday, August 8, 2014

Friday, August 1, 2014

Blastocystis in ICOPA2014

The PRE-ICOPA Workshop on Molecular Parasitology that will take place at CINVESTAV, Mexico City, is only one week away! You can download the program here. There will be sessions on local databases, genomes resources, qPCR, High Resolution Melting Curve Analysis, transcriptomics, proteomics and more, using Toxoplasma, Giardia, Leishmania, Trypanosoma and Blastocystis as model organisms.

I will be heading the 4 h session on molecular epidemiology of Blastocystis, including a 2 h dry lab session allowing students to explore the database at www.pubmlst.org/blastocystis and get familiar with sequence assembly and basic phylogenetic analysis of complete ribosomal genes.

ICOPA 2014 will take place in Mexico City, once known as Tenochtitlán (Work by Wolfgang Sauber; source)

Blastocystis is also on the agenda in one of the ICOPA symposia: On the 11th of August, there will be a late afternoon session on Blastocystis in the context of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Speakers will include Dr Pauline Scanlan (IRE), Dr Pablo Maravilla (MEX), Mr Ken Boorom (US), and myself. Incidentally, Dr Scanlan + colleagues just published a paper on Blastocystis in healthy individuals in FEMS Microbiology and Ecology, - you can access the paper - or at least the abstract - here.

See you in Mexico?