engleski

Bioinformatics investigation of dog babesiosis from host differentially expressed proteins identified by proteomics

The objective of this study was to elucidate molecular pathways involved in dogs infected by the haemoprotozoan parasite Babesia canis canis, using bioinformatics approach. Canine babesiosis is a tick-borne disease caused by parasites of the genius Babesia, notably Babesia canis canis. Different studies have identified markers related with babesiosis infection status in dogs, at proteomics and biochemistry levels. To date, no study have been performed to elucidate molecular pathways implied in host babesiosis reaction. Such knowledge will be useful to predict potential biomarkers of infection, better understand host reaction and host-pathogen relationship, and propose new therapy. In this study, 17 proteins differentially expressed in serum between control and Babesia canis canis infected dogs (Kuleš, 2014) have been used to generate a first enriched molecular network, with Cytoscape (330 proteins, 4059 interactions). This network has been defined as a list of 14 molecular pathways by a Gene Ontology analyse. Then the identified pathways with their complete list of molecules were merged to generated a final and refined network of babesiosis host reaction (714 genes/proteins, 76 small chemicals, 6367 interactions). This network was used to visualized interactions and crossroads between different pathways, to better understand and modelize babesiosis in host, as well as propose potential new markers. Final result is the proposal of a hypothetical in silico model of babesiosis in dog host, consistent with different published studies about babesiosis. Acknowledgements: this work was supported by European Commission (ERA Chair FP7, Project “VetMedZg’’, Grant 621394) and Croatian Science Foundation (Project “BioDog’’ Grant 4135, Grant VEGA 1/0258/15 and VEGA 1/0261/15).

babesiosis, bioinformatics, Cytoscape, pathway analysis, proteomics

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