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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

The project also needs to continue. Do epigenetic marks established during egg development have effects even in mammalian stages? That is a very important question that needs answering, because the answer could have implications on how faithfully our lab model is representing what happens in nature.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

Speaking personally, my students have no interest in continuing to use intestines 🤣 ...but I might make them 🤷🏻‍♂️ We will see. I think this is an important conversation for the schistosome community to have.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

So, what now? There's a reason everyone works with parasites derived from liver - the intestines are a pain to work with and yield very few eggs. Anything that requires a few thousands miracidia, perhaps even life cycle maintenance, would involve hundreds to thousands of rodents if using intestines.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

Our next question was if these differences have effects on miracidia behavior (what we study). The answer is (unfortunately) yes. Most quantitative track features from unstimulated miracidia are different. Aggregated feature summaries show distinct clusters based on tissue origin as eggs.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

We wondered - do these differences dissipate over time? Are miracidia transcriptomes synchronized after hatching? The answer is no. Even after hatching and equilibrating at room temperature for a few hours, miracidia transcriptomes can still be distinguished by their tissue origin as eggs.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

Well, last year Peterková et al. showed that eggs derived from either the liver (dead end) or intestine (natural migration/excretion route) are transcriptomically *and* antigenically distinct. This was a very important finding. journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Winners vs. losers: Schistosoma mansoni intestinal and liver eggs exhibit striking differences in gene expression and immunogenicity

Author summary The egg of Schistosoma mansoni is the main causative agent of pathologies of chronic schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease with a significant global health burden. Pathology is ...

journals.plos.org

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

The problem is that the liver is a dead end for the schistosome life cycle. The reason we use liver eggs is entirely due to convenience - they accumulate there in the tens of thousands and hatch to miracidia that can competently infect snails, what's there to lose?

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

We work with schistosome miracidia, the larval stage that hatches from eggs after being excreted from the definitive host into water. Almost everyone who works with schistosomes use miracidia that were hatched from eggs derived from rodent liver.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Aug 21

I am pleased to present a project we've been working on for the least year to try to answer a fundamental question - does a parasite's developmental niche as an egg have effects on larval stages? We show that the answer is very much yes - which has a few implications. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Tissue-specific distribution of eggs in the definitive host drives transcriptomic and behavioral differences in Schistosoma mansoni miracidia

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by human-infective schistosomes (Trematoda: Schistosoma). Intestinal schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa and the Neotropics is caused primarily...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Nic Wheeler

Tom Pennance @schistosoma.bsky.social · Jul 27

New research w/ @jacobphd.bsky.social et al. published today in Nature Communications: Genes linked to schistosome resistance identified in a genome-wide association study of African snail vectors doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🐌🪱🧬

Genes linked to schistosome resistance identified in a genome-wide association study of African snail vectors - Nature Communications

A genome wide association study of an African vector of schistosomiasis revealed two genomic regions associated with resistance to Schistosoma mansoni. These findings will inform novel control strateg...

doi.org

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Jul 3

Other than myself, ever single author of this manuscript is an undergraduate student. What a blast it is to work these inspiring students.

Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Jul 3

Along the way, we generated a few models for controlling snail (and thus human) schistosome infections that are completely novel, and we took the first small steps toward that ultimate goal. Seeing the basic biology provide a foundation for new translational approaches has been incredibly exciting.

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Jul 3

Very excited and proud to release a project that I’ve been thinking about for at least 7 years, well before I started my faculty position. We built an imaging and computational platform from the ground up to help answer some outstanding questions in schistosome miracidia biology.

Quantitative ethology of schistosome miracidia characterizes a conserved snail peptide that inhibits penetration

Over 700 million people are at risk of contracting schistosomiasis due to regular exposure to freshwater sources where infected snails, the obligate intermediate hosts of schistosomes, are endemic. Al...

www.biorxiv.org

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Apr 25

💻🧬🦟🪱

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Apr 25

Our annual Celebration of Scholarship and Creative Activity is a yearly highlight of mine. Proud of the students and their 5 poster presentations!

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Apr 23

Such an important resource. Subscribe with me!

veupathdb.org @veupathdb.org · Apr 21

Keep VEuPathDB open-access to all by subscribing today! veupathdb.org/veupathdb/ap...

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Apr 8

UWEC students won an unprecedented three (3!) Goldwater Scholarships this year, and our lab member Rachel was one of them! I’m so proud of Rachel’s development as a scientist and excited that she’s been recognized as a future leader. Check out the story on her award: www.uwec.edu/stories/firs...

From first-gen transfer jitters to Goldwater Scholar: Rachel Horejsi

Rachel Horejsi Goldwater Award

www.uwec.edu

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Mar 24

Now published at IJP:DDR! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Mar 17

We have also now added a dedicated documentation website: wrmxpress-gui.readthedocs.io/latest/.

The GUI runs in a browser and is easily installed through Docker Desktop. We've made it easy to download example data from our Zenodo repo, which allows users to see the pipelines in action.

wrmXpress-gui

Documentation for the wrmXpress GUI.

wrmxpress-gui.readthedocs.io

Nic Wheeler @wheelerlab.bio · Mar 17

Additionally, the GUI was made possible by substantial updates to the backend by folks in the Zamanian lab (@zamanian.bsky.social). v2.0 is officially out: github.com/zamanianlab/.... It includes new segmentation and tracking algorithms and support for 384-well plates.