Projet ANR-07-BLAN-0119 – SCHISTOPHEPIGEN : Phenotypic variability in host-parasite compatibility : involvement of genotype and epigenotype
Programme : Blanc (BLANC) 2007
Année de financement : 2007
Coordinateur du projet : (CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - DELEGATION REGIONALE LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON)
Partenaires : Centre national de la recherche scientifique; Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale
Montant : 320000.0 euros
Date de début : 2007
Durée : 36 mois
Résumé : Genetics, epigenetics and physiological/morphological responses to environmental changes are -  in general studied in isolation from each other. The fundamental goal of this project is to investigate the -  question of phenotypic plasticity and its basis in genetics, epigenetics, population and environment -  induced posttranscriptional modifications by a concomitant investigation of these fields and their impact -  on fitness in a host-parasite system. S. mansoni and its invertebrate and vertebrate hosts provide a -  excellent model since, as with all parasites, (co)evolution is rapid, but in contrast to other host-parasite -  systems we observe here a pronounced phenotypic variability of the infective larvae. These phenotypes -  are relatively stable within one generation, they can be characterized experimentally using molecular -  markers and infection success can be measured quantitatively for each phenotype. Since, at the current -  state of the art, it would be ambitious to deal with this topic exclusively by a combined wholegenome/ -  transcriptome/proteome approach, we intend to begin with two groups/families of candidate -  proteins: MSPP and Ag10-3. Both have similarities to the mucin group of proteins and we will refer -  to them as mucin-like proteins. They are highly polymorphic molecules and their gene structure, -  their organization in multi-gene families and their involvement in critical interactions with the immune -  system of their hosts make them targets of choice for the development of studies on the -  phenotype/genotype/epigenotype relationship that we propose to undertake.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ...