A novel BR-SMAD is required for larval development in barber's pole worm Haemonchus contortus

Fangfang Li; Peixi Qin; Lisha Ye; Nishith Gupta; Min Hu

doi:10.15698/mic2021.02.742

A novel BR-SMAD is required for larval development in barber's pole worm Haemonchus contortus

Microb Cell. 2020 Dec 23;8(2):57-64. doi: 10.15698/mic2021.02.742.

Authors

Fangfang Li¹, Peixi Qin¹, Lisha Ye¹, Nishith Gupta^{1

2

3}, Min Hu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Molecular Parasitology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani (BITS-P), Hyderabad, India.

Abstract

SMAD proteins mediate TGF-β signaling and thereby regulate the metazoan development; however, they are poorly defined in Haemonchus contortus-a common blood-sucking parasitic nematode of small ruminants. Here, we characterized an R-SMAD family protein in H. contortus termed HcSMA2, which is closely related to Caenorhabditis elegans SMA2 (CeSMA2) involved in the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling. Hcsma2 is transcribed in all developmental stages of H. contortus but highly induced in the adult male worms. The RNA interference with Hcsma2 retarded the transition of infective L3 into L4 larvae. Besides, the bimolecular fluorescence complementation revealed the interaction of HcSMA2 with a TGF-β-activated-R-SMAD (HcDAF8). Together these results show a BMP-like receptor-regulated SMAD in H. contortus that is required for larval differentiation and underscore an adaptive functional repurposing of BMP-signaling in parasitic worms.

Keywords: BMP subfamily; Haemonchus contortus; R-SMADs; RNAi; larval development.

Grants and funding

We thank Robin B. Gasser (The University of Melbourne) for helpful discussion. This study was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program (973 program) of China (2015CB150300), the National Natural Science Foundation (31872462) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (2017CFA020) to M.H.