Identification and characterization of microRNAs in the pancreatic fluke Eurytrema pancreaticum

Background: eurytrema pancreaticum is one of the most common flukes,which mainly infects ruminants globally and infects human beings accidentally; causing eurytremiasis that has high veterinary and economic importance. micrornas (mirnas) are small non-coding rnas and are now considered as a key mechanism of gene regulation at the post-transcription level. methods. we investigated the global mirna expression profile of e. pancreaticum adults using next-generation sequencing technology combined with real-time quantitative pcr. results: by using the genome of the closely-related species schistosoma japonicum as reference,we obtained 27 mirna candidates out of 16.45 million raw sequencing reads,with 13 of them found as known mirnas in s. japonicum and/or s. mansoni,and the remaining 14 mirnas were considered as novel. five out of the 13 known mirnas coming from one family named as sja-mir-2,including family members from mir-2a to mir-2e. targets of 19 mirnas were successfully predicated out of the 17401 mrna and est non-redundant sequences of s. japonicum. it was found that a significant high number of targets were related to chch domain-containing protein mitochondrial precursor (n = 29),small subunit ribosomal protein s30e (n = 21),and insulin-induced gene 1 protein (n = 9). besides,egg protein cp3842 (n = 2),fumarate hydratase (n = 2),ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme (n = 2),and sperm-associated antigen 6 (n = 1) were also found as targets of the mirnas of e. pancreaticum. conclusions: the present study represents the first global characterization of e. pancreaticum mirnas,which provides novel resources for a better understanding of the parasite,which,in turn,has implications for the effective control of the disease it causes. © 2013 xu et al; licensee biomed central ltd.