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Evidence for lateral gene transfer from salmonids to two Schistosome species

Nature Genetics volume 36, pages 786–787 (2004)Cite this article

To the editor:

Two detailed studies of the genomes of Asian and African and American schistosomes were recently published1,2. In the former, some 13,131 gene clusters from Schistosoma japonicum EST clones were analyzed and their hypothetical protein products were compared with those of model organisms, uncovering about 30% homologous proteins (at E ≤ 10−10). In their report on the evolutionary implications of their sequencing project1, however, the authors did not mention that one of their libraries (SjC7/94) contained many inserts with high homology to genomic DNA of salmonid fish. This was recorded in GenBank, in which it was stated that these homologous inserts amounted to 2–3% of the library clones. Our analysis showed that more than 10% of the SjC7/94 clones matched (E ≤ 10−10) DNA of salmonid fish; more than 95% of these were the best matches found in the entire nr database.

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Figure 1: Salmonid-specific transposon-like sequences are present in genomes of S. japonicum and S. mansoni but have a limited pattern of expression.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. P. Lim of the Bioinformatics Institute for help with the BLAST searches.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, 117542, Singapore

    Philippa Melamed & Kok Leong Chong

  2. The Danish Bilharziasis Laboratory, Jaegersborg Allé 1D, Charlottenlund, DK-2920, Denmark

    Maria Vang Johansen

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  1. Philippa Melamed
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  2. Kok Leong Chong
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  3. Maria Vang Johansen
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Melamed, P., Chong, K. & Johansen, M. Evidence for lateral gene transfer from salmonids to two Schistosome species. Nat Genet 36, 786–787 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0804-786

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