De novo assembly, functional annotation and metabolic reconstruction of the transcriptome of Angiostrongylus cantonensis adult worms

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is the main etiological agent of eosinophilic meningoencephalitis in humans. In last years, several outbreaks have been documented worldwide, characterizing an emerging global public health problem. There is no specific treatment for the disease and an urgent better knowledge about the mechanism of infection and worm survival is needed to better understand the pathology and to prospect possible new treatment approaches. We report the de novo assembly of the transcriptome, its full functional annotation and a reconstruction of complete metabolic pathways of A. cantonensis. All results are available at AngiostrongylusDB (http://angiostrongylus.lad.pucrs.br:443/admin/welcome). The study aimed to identify the active genes and to map the metabolic pathways possibly involved with the mechanisms of infection and survival in the host. Among 389 metabolic mapped pathways we highlight the heparan sulfate anticoagulant/antithrombotic pathways. We also identified homologous genes GP63 (leishmanolysin), CALR (calreticulin), ACE (peptidyl-dipeptidase A), involved in infection mechanisms of Tritryp parasites and TgHSP70 of Toxoplasma. The large dataset of functional annotation here presented may facilitate future functional genomics studies and provide new insights on treatment and diagnosis of A. cantonensis.