Mostrando postagens com marcador vermes. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador vermes. Mostrar todas as postagens

quarta-feira, 7 de dezembro de 2022

 7 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2022

Uma equipe de marido e mulher resolve o mistério de como os vermes desenvolvem seu intestino

Como os vermes desenvolvem suas entranhas?
Morris Maduro (à esquerda) e Gina Broitman-Maduro. Crédito: Laboratório Maduro/UCR

Se não fosse pela pandemia de COVID-19, uma descoberta importante sobre o desenvolvimento de nematoides – vermes cilíndricos alongados – poderia não ter sido feita.

Com a maioria das aulas e reuniões em universidades e escolas transferidas para a Internet em 2020-2021, uma equipe de pesquisa de marido e mulher da Universidade da Califórnia, Riverside, finalmente encontrou algum tempo para explorar uma questão sobre a qual vinham refletindo há muito tempo. : Como os nematoides distantemente relacionados ao mais estudado, Caenorhabditis elegans, fazem seu intestino, já que os genes responsáveis ​​pela especificação do intestino em C. elegans estão ausentes em outros nematoides?

"A pandemia liberou algum tempo para pensarmos em quais pesquisas gostaríamos de avançar quando a pandemia diminuísse", disse Morris Maduro, professor de biologia molecular, celular e de  e autor correspondente do estudo publicado na Development .

"Felizmente, um experimento que conduzimos gerou um resultado surpreendente. Acontece que uma rede de genes mais simples parece estar envolvida na especificação do intestino em nematoides relacionados a C. elegans. Uma espécie ancestral de C. elegans parece ter duplicado e expandido essa rede mais simples rede genética para fazer uma que seja mais complicada, e essa rede complicada é a que temos estudado todo esse tempo em C. elegans."

Devido, em parte, à rapidez com que se desenvolve, C. elegans é um dos organismos modelo mais amplamente utilizados nas disciplinas biológicas, especialmente no estudo de como os genes orquestram o desenvolvimento. Com cerca de um milímetro de comprimento, o C. elegans vive como um necrófago no solo, onde se alimenta de micróbios, como bactérias, encontrados em alimentos estragados.  é macho ou hermafrodita (com órgãos reprodutores masculinos e femininos) e tem vida livre. Não é um parasita humano nem de plantas e não infecta ou prejudica nenhum organismo conhecido pelos cientistas.

Maduro, atualmente chefe do Departamento de Biologia Molecular, Celular e de Sistemas, estuda o C. elegans e outros nematoides há mais de duas décadas. Ele explicou que os nematoides têm uma anatomia simples. O sistema digestivo é um único órgão, o intestino, e em C. elegans é feito dos descendentes de uma única célula no embrião inicial, chamada E.

“Nós e outros descobrimos há cerca de 20 anos que a rede de genes que faz com que a célula E se torne o progenitor do intestino envolve vários genes que estão todos relacionados a uma família de fatores de transcrição chamados fatores GATA”, disse Maduro.

Usando C. elegans, o laboratório de Maduro há muito tempo estuda como os fatores de transcrição, que são proteínas que ativam a expressão de genes, funcionam em embriões animais primitivos.

“Os fatores de transcrição funcionam no que chamamos de redes gênicas, que são importantes em biologia não apenas para o desenvolvimento de plantas e animais, mas também para como os organismos respondem a mudanças em seu ambiente e até como as células cancerígenas mudam suas propriedades dentro dos tumores”, disse Maduro. disse.

Ele explicou que as proteínas nos organismos vivos podem ser consideradas parte de um conjunto de ferramentas genéticas.

"Imagine uma caixa de ferramentas com ferramentas como martelos, chaves de fenda e furadeiras", disse ele.

"Você pode usar as mesmas ferramentas para fazer uma estante ou construir uma casa. Embora uma estante pareça diferente de uma casa, elas podem ser construídas com o mesmo kit de ferramentas. Da mesma forma,  encontram várias maneiras de usar proteínas, as ferramentas genéticas que são os produtos dos genes. Com o tempo, no entanto, diferentes genes são ativados para fazer com que as células desempenhem certas funções em um animal ou planta. As redes de genes resultantes envolvem diferentes maneiras de usar os mesmos tipos de  ."

Como os vermes desenvolvem seu intestino?
O blastômero E, a rede de genes da endoderme central e a conservação do fator GATA em Caenorhabditis. (A) A célula E, mostrada no estágio de oito células, dá origem a 20 descendentes que formam o intestino juvenil, mostrado em uma larva. Os núcleos de E e seus descendentes estão sombreados em verde. O restante do trato digestivo também é mostrado. ant., anterior; pós., posterior. (B) Diagrama da rede de especificação do endoderma de C. elegans (Maduro, 2017). Os fatores ausentes em parentes mais distantes de C. elegans estão sombreados em azul. As linhas pretas indicam fortes interações regulatórias e as linhas cinzas indicam interações mais fracas. (C) Alinhamento dos DBDs (C4 dedo de zinco e domínio básico) dos fatores GATA canônicos em C. elegans e C. angaria. Os blocos coloridos foram gerados pelo MView Multiple Sequence Alignment (https://www.ebi. ac.uk/Tools/msa/mview/). (D) Árvore RAxML-NG dos DBDs mostrados em C gerados usando CIPRES Gateway (https://www.phylo.org/), semelhante a árvores feitas em um trabalho anterior (Eurmsirilerd e Maduro, 2020). O genoma de C. elegans contém dois fatores GATA embrionários adicionais, elt-4, que é uma duplicação parcial de elt-2 que não tem função, e elt-6, um parálogo de elt-5 (Koh e Rothman, 2001; Fukushige et al ., 2003). (E) Filogenia de C. elegans com duas espécies de grupo externo, Diploscapter coronatus e Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, com base em trabalhos publicados anteriormente e na filogenia mais recente disponível no The Caenorhabditis Genomes Project (Félix et al., 2014; Slos et al., 2017; Stevens et al., 2019; Stevens et al., 2020). Para C. uteleia, o ortólogo elt-2 é CUTEL.g25177 e os ortólogos elt-3 são CUTEL.g19098, CUTEL.g19099, CUTEL.g14171 e CUTEL. g17053 (montagem JU2585_v1 do The Caenorhabditis Genomes Project). Para C. portoensis, o ortólogo elt-2 é CPORT.g4338 e o ortólogo elt-3 é CPORT.g6550 (montagem EG5626_v1 do The Caenorhabditis Genomes Project). Todos os ortólogos restantes foram identificados previamente (Eurmsirilerd e Maduro, 2020; Maduro, 2020). As espécies estudadas neste trabalho estão em negrito. Crédito:Desenvolvimento (2022). DOI: 10.1242/dev.200984

Maduro e sua esposa, Gina Broitman-Maduro, descobriram que os genes que estudaram por muitos anos em C. elegans que especificavam o intestino estavam ausentes na maioria dos outros nematoides, deixando-os se perguntando como o intestino é feito nesses nematoides.

“No final de 2021, quando a pandemia estava diminuindo, decidimos examinar um parente distante de C. elegans, chamado C. angaria, para ver se conseguíamos descobrir como ele faz seu intestino”, disse Maduro. "Foi um experimento de longo alcance, pois não esperávamos descobrir. No entanto, em questão de poucos meses, descobrimos que os muitos fatores GATA em C. elegans eram apenas um único fator em C. angaria. Este único fator, ELT-3, realmente existe em C. elegans, mas não tem a mesma função."

Em C. elegans, sabe-se que o fator ELT-3 está envolvido nas respostas ao estresse e sua função é substituída pela função de dois outros genes, END-1 e END-3. Assim como em C. angaria quando o ELT-3 é deletado, o intestino em C. elegans não pode se formar quando ambos END-1 e END-3 estão ausentes.

“Essencialmente, estamos olhando para um sistema biológico que retém uma rede mais simples de um período anterior da evolução – provavelmente de 20 a 50 milhões de anos atrás – e podemos compará-lo a uma versão mais complexa que evoluiu a partir dele”, disse Maduro.

"Observando o interior das células, podemos entender como a maquinaria do desenvolvimento mudou ao longo do tempo. É como se tivéssemos uma máquina do tempo para olhar para os ancestrais do C. elegans e entender como a evolução resultou em uma versão de uma rede genética para mudar para outro sem alterar significativamente a aparência do verme. As mudanças são internas e acontecem 'sob o capô' e oferecem uma oportunidade extraordinária para entender como a natureza encontra diferentes maneiras de chegar ao mesmo ponto final."

Para garantir que estavam no caminho certo, Maduro e Broitman-Maduro conseguiram forçar a proteína C. angaria ELT-3 a ser expressa na hora e no local certos em C. elegans. Eles mostraram que poderia especificar o intestino.

"Quando as pessoas pensam em genes que sofrem mudanças ao longo do tempo evolutivo, elas pensam em uma planta ou animal fazendo algo diferente - ou seja, os  mudam para que o animal seja maior, ou mais rápido, ou possa fazer algo que outra espécie não pode, como resistir algum patógeno, ou crescem sob condições ambientais mais severas", disse Broitman-Maduro, primeiro autor do trabalho de pesquisa e especialista associado no laboratório Maduro.

"Aqui, a mudança na rede genética não parece fazer nada fundamentalmente diferente: a anatomia e o desenvolvimento de espécies distantemente relacionadas, C. angaria, são quase indistinguíveis de C. elegans."

Uma questão que Maduro e Broitman-Maduro estão investigando agora é por que, em comparação com outros nematóides, C. elegans precisaria de uma rede genética mais complicada para especificar o intestino.

"Uma de nossas ideias é que a nova rede permite que C. elegans se desenvolva mais rapidamente, e estamos tentando examinar essa ideia com mais detalhes", disse Maduro.

“Agora que sabemos o que especifica o intestino nesses nematóides distantemente relacionados, planejamos investigar se esse mecanismo é ainda mais amplamente conservado ao observar uma espécie mais distante, Pristionchus pacificus”.

Mais informações: Gina Broitman-Maduro et al, O fator GATA ELT-3 especifica o endoderma em Caenorhabditis angaria em uma rede genética ancestral, Desenvolvimento (2022). DOI: 10.1242/dev.200984

Informações do jornal: Desenvolvimento 


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terça-feira, 5 de março de 2019

500 Million-Year-Old Worm Superhighway Revealed in Ancient Seafloor


500 Million-Year-Old Worm Superhighway Revealed in Ancient Seafloor

Preserved worm burrows in Canadian rock were invisible to the naked eye. In this image, a large, lined, horizontal burrow is almost 0.8 inches (20 mm) wide.
Credit: University of Saskatchewan
About a half billion years ago, an ancient sea covered what is now the northernmost stretches of Canada. Its seafloor was long thought to be a dead zone, devoid of the oxygen needed to support life.
But as it turns out, minuscule worms lived quite happily in these ocean sediments — they even created their own "superhighway" of tunnels by burrowing through the soil.


Traces of these fossilized tunnels were found in rocks collected decades ago from Canada's Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories. But scientists more recently found the tiny tunnels only after reanalyzing them, they reported in a new study.

Their discovery sheds light on the region's ocean ecosystems during the Cambrian era (543 million to 490 million years ago), suggesting that these environments may have harbored more oxygen — and more life — than expected, according to the study. [Cambrian Creatures Gallery: Photos of Primitive Sea Life]
The tunnels that the worms left behind in the weathered rock weren't visible to the naked eye, and were detected purely by chance, lead study author Brian Pratt, a professor of geological sciences with the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told Live Science in an email.

Pratt and his co-author Julien Kimmig, a collections manager of invertebrate paleontology with the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas, found the tunnels while collaborating on another study published in 2018. (They described a "poop picnic" enjoyed by Cambrian worms at the same site where the worm tunnels were found, Pratt said.)
Pratt and Kimmig were preparing samples for the 2018 study — sawing and grinding the rocks — when they discovered something that they hadn't seen before.

"I noticed some slight variation in shading," Pratt said. He dampened the smooth surface of a rock sample with alcohol, scanned it on a flatbed scanner and enhanced the image brightness and contrast. Suddenly, "a riot of burrows appeared," he said. Some areas were crisscrossed by just a few tunnels, but other portions of rock were "completely churned" by the worms' activities, he said.
The preserved tunnel shapes were exceptionally well-defined and had not collapsed, hinting that the sediment around them was firm and not "soupy," the study authors wrote.
Researcher Brian Pratt found evidence of worm activity from 500 million years ago preserved in a fossil-rich site in British Columbia, Canada.

Researcher Brian Pratt found evidence of worm activity from 500 million years ago preserved in a fossil-rich site in British Columbia, Canada.
Credit: University of Saskatchewan
In width, the tunnels measured from 0.02 to 0.6 inches (0.5 to 15 millimeters), made by worms ranging from about a millimeter in length to finger-size, according to the study. Most of the burrows were tiny, dug out by worms that scoured the ocean sediment looking for organic matter to eat. The rare, larger tunnels likely housed predatory filter-feeders — "animals that projected a feeding apparatus up into the water column to catch organic particles and tiny animals," Pratt said.

Also contained in the rock were the preserved bodies of worms — not the worms that dug the tunnels — and "large poops" containing shreds of body tissues that likely belonged to other worms that were eaten, according to Pratt.

Together, this evidence presents a fascinating snapshot of an ancient seafloor habitat, in an ocean ecosystem that was far richer — in oxygen and species — than expected, the scientists reported.
The findings were published online in the March issue of the journal Geology.
Originally published on Live Science.

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terça-feira, 15 de janeiro de 2019

18. Where there was insufficient DNA, adapter-ligated material was subjected to ~8 PCR cycles.We used 1–10 μg gDNA or whole genome amplification DNA to generate 3 kb mate-pair libraries, as described for S. stercoralis18. If there was insufficient gDNA, whole genome amplification was performed using GenomiPhi v2. Each library was run on ≥1 Illumina HiSeq 2000 lane.
Short insert paired-end reads were corrected and assembled with SGA v0.9.798 (Supplementary Fig. 26a). This assembly was used to calculate the k-mer distribution for all odd k of 41–81, using GenomeTools v.1.3.799. The k-mer length for which the maximum number of unique k-mers was present was used as the k-mer setting in a second assembly, using Velvet v1.2.03100 with SGA-corrected reads. For species with 3 kb mate-pair data, the Velvet assembly was scaffolded using SSPACE101. Contigs were extended, and gaps closed and shortened, using Gapfiller102 and IMAGE103. Short fragment reads were remapped to the assembly using SMALT (see URLs), and unaligned reads assembled using Velvet100 and this merged with the main assembly. The assembly was re-scaffolded using SSPACE101, and consensus base quality improved with iCORN104. REAPR105 was used to break incorrectly assembled scaffolds/contigs. We carried out manual improvement for Wuchereria bancrofti and D. medinensis using Gap5106 and Illumina read-pairs.

WSI assembly quality control

Contamination screening. Assemblies were screened for contamination using BLAST107 against vertebrate and invertebrate sequences (see ref. 108). For Anisakis simplex, the assembly contained minor laboratory contamination with S. mansoni, which we removed using BLASTN against S. mansoni.
Assembly completeness. CEGMA v2.4109 was used to assess completeness. Consistent sets of CEGMA genes were missing from some phylogenetic groups (Supplementary Table 2); these were discounted from the completeness calculation for those species (‘CEGMA’ in Supplementary Table 2).
Effect of repeats. We re-mapped the short-insert library’s reads to the appropriate assembly using SMALT (see URLs; indexing -k13 -s4 and mapping -y 0.9 -x -r 1). For each scaffold of ≥8 kb, median (meds) and mean (ms) per-base read-depth were calculated using BEDTools110, and genome-wide depth (medg) calculated as the median meds (ref. 17). For a ls bp scaffold, the extra sequence that would be gained by ‘uncollapsing’ repeats was estimated as es = (ms − medg) × ls/medg (Supplementary Table 5).

WSI gene prediction

Our pipeline111 had four steps (Supplementary Fig. 27a). First, repeats were masked. Second, preliminary gene predictions, to use as input for MAKER v2.2.28112 were generated using Augustus 2.5.5113, SNAP 2013-02-16114, GeneMark-ES 2.3a115, genBlastG116 and RATT117. Third, species-specific ESTs and complementary DNAs from INSDC118, and proteins from related species, were aligned to the genome using BLAST107. Last, EST/protein alignments and gene models were used by MAKER to produce a gene set.

McDonnell Genome Institute (MGI) data production

The genomes of six species were sequenced at MGI (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2).

MGI sequencing, assembly and quality control

Genome sequencing was carried out on Illumina and 454 instruments (see ref. 119). The workflow for each assembly is in Supplementary Table 1.
Three kilobase, 8 kb and fragment 454 reads (or Illumina reads) were subject to adapter removal, quality trimming and length filtering (Supplementary Fig. 26b). Cleaned 454 reads were assembled using Newbler120 before being scaffolded with an in-house tool CIGA, which links contigs based on cDNA evidence. Cleaned Illumina reads were assembled using AllPaths-LG121. The assembly was scaffolded further using an in-house tool Pygap, using Illumina short paired-end sequences; and L_RNA_scaffolder122, using 454 cDNA data.
An assisted assembly approach was used for Trichinella nativa, whereby ‘cleaned’ Illumina 3 kb paired-end sequence data were mapped against the T. spiralis genome using bwa123 (Supplementary Fig. 26b), and the T. nativa residues were substituted at aligned positions (see ref. 119).
Adaptor sequences and contaminants were identified by comparison to a database of vectors and contaminants, using Megablast124.

MGI transcriptome sequencing and gene prediction

Transcriptome libraries (Supplementary Table 22) were generated with the Illumina TS stranded protocol, and reads assembled using Trinity125 (see ref. 119).
Genes were predicted using MAKER112, based on input gene models from SNAP114, FGENESH (Softberry), Augustus113, and aligned messenger RNA, EST, transcriptome and protein data from the same or related species (Supplementary Fig. 27b; see ref. 119).

Blaxter Nematode and Neglected Genomics (BaNG) data production

The genomes of three species were sequenced by BaNG (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2).
Sequencing was performed on Illumina HiSeq 2000 and HiSeq 2500 instruments, using 100 or 125 base, paired-end protocols. Paired-end libraries were generated using the Illumina TruSeq protocol.
Sequence data were filtered of contaminating host reads using blobtools126. Cleaned reads were normalized with the khmer software127 using a k-mer of 41, and then assembled with ABySS (v1.3.3)128, with a minimum of three pairs needed to connect contigs during scaffolding (n = 3) (Supplementary Fig. 26c). Assemblies were assessed using blobtools and CEGMA109.
Augustus113 was used to predict gene models, trained using annotations from MAKER112. As hints for MAKER, we used Litomosoides sigmodontis 454 RNA sequencing data assembled with MIRA129 and Newbler120, and Onchocerca ochengi Illumina RNA sequencing data130 assembled using Trinity131 (Supplementary Fig. 27c).

Defining high-quality ‘tier 1’ species

A subset of nematode and platyhelminth genomes, termed ‘tier 1’, was selected that had better-quality assemblies and spanned the major clades (Supplementary Table 4). To choose these, species were selected that (1) had contiguous assemblies (usually N50/scaffold-count >5), and complete proteomes (usually CEGMA partial >85%), or (2) that helped to ensure ~50% of the genera in each species group (‘Analysis group’ in Supplementary Table 4) were represented.

Analysis of repeat content and genome size

For each species, repeat libraries were built using RepeatModeler (see URLs), TransposonPSI (see URLs) and LTRharvest132, and the three libraries merged (see ref. 133). The merged library was used to mask repeats in a species’ genome using RepeatMasker (see URLs; –s).
The initial standard regression model and stepwise model fitting used ‘lm’ and ‘step’ in R v3.2.2. The Bayesian mixed-effect model used MCMCglmm134 (v2.24). To create a mixed-effect model, the species tree (see Methods) was transformed into an ultrametric tree using PATHd8135, with a small constant added to short branches to ensure no zero-length branches were reconstructed; and outgroup species were removed.

Compara database

An in-house Ensembl Compara46 database was constructed containing the 81 platyhelminths and nematodes, and 10 additional outgroups (Supplementary Table 2). All parasitic nematode/platyhelminth species with gene sets available at the time (April 2014) were included.
The species tree used to construct the initial version of our database used an edited version of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) taxonomy136 with several controversial speciation nodes represented as multifurcations. For our final database, the input species tree was derived by building a tree based on the previous database version, based on one-to-one orthologs present in ≥20 species. To do this, proteins in each ortholog group were aligned using MAFFT v6.857137; alignments trimmed using GBlocks v0.91b138, concatenated and used to build a maximum likelihood tree using a partitioned analysis in RAxML v7.8.6139, using the minimum Akaike’s information criterion (minAIC) model for each ortholog group.
The database was queried to identify gene families, orthologs and paralogs.

Species tree and tree based on gene family presence

We identified 202 gene families present in ≥25% of the 91 species (81 helminths and 10 outgroups) in our Compara database (Methods) and always single-copy. For each family, amino acid sequences were aligned using MAFFT v7.205137 (-auto). Each alignment was trimmed using GBlocks v0.91b138 (-b4 = 4 -b3 = 4 -b5 = h), and its likelihood calculated on a maximum-parsimony guide tree for all relatively simple (single-matrix) amino acid substitution models in RAxML v8.0.24139, and the minAIC model identified. Alignments were concatenated and a maximum-likelihood tree built, under a partitioned model in which sites from a gene were assigned the minAIC model for that gene, with a discrete gamma distribution of rates across sites. Relationships within outgroup lineages were constrained to match the standard view of metazoan relationships (for example, Dunn et al.140). The final tree was the highest likelihood one from five search replicates with different random number seeds. One hundred bootstrap resampling replicates were performed, each based on a single rapid search.
We also constructed a maximum-likelihood phylogeny based on gene family presence/absence for families not shared by all 81 nematode/platyhelminth species, using RAxML v8.2.8139, with a two-state model and the Lewis method to correct for absence of constant-state observations.

Functional annotation

InterProScan141 v5.0.7 was used to identify conserved domains from all predicted proteins. A name was assigned to each predicted protein based on curated information in UniProt142 for orthologs identified from our Compara database (Methods), or based on InterPro143 domains (see ref. 144). Gene ontology (GO) terms were assigned by transferring GO terms from orthologs144, and using InterProScan.
Signal peptides and transmembrane domains were predicted using Phobius145 v1.01 and SecretomeP146 v1.0. A protein predicted by Phobius to have a transmembrane domain was categorized as ‘membrane-bound’, and non-membrane-bound proteins as ‘classically secreted’ if Phobius predicted a signal peptide within 70 amino acids of their start. Remaining proteins in which SecretomeP predicted a signal peptide were classified as ‘non-classically secreted’ (Supplementary Table 7).
Pairwise combinations of Pfam domains were identified in proteins of the 81 nematodes and platyhelminths. After excluding those present in complete genomes of other phyla in UniProt (June 2016), we classified a combination as ‘nematode-specific’ (or ‘flatworm-specific’) if it was present in >30% of nematodes (platyhelminths) and no platyhelminths (nematodes) (Supplementary Table 14).

Synapomorphic gene families

Families in our Compara database (Methods) were analyzed using KinFin v0.8.3147, by providing InterPro IDs (Methods) and a species tree that had clades III, IV and V as a polytomy (Fig. 2). Synapomorphic families were identified at 25 nodes of interest (Supplementary Table 8), by using Dollo parsimony and requiring a family must contain genes from ≥1 descendant species from each child node of the node of interest, and must not contain other species. Families were filtered to retain those that (1) contained ≥90% of descendant species of the node of interest, and (2) in which >90% of species contained ≥1 gene with a particular InterPro domain.

Candidate lateral gene transfers

Ferrochelatase families in our Compara database (Methods) were extracted by screening for a Ferrochelatase (IPR001015) domain. Additional ferrochelatases were retrieved from NCBI for 17 bacterial taxa (Supplementary Table 8c). Sequences were aligned using MAFFT v7.267 (E-INS-i algorithm)137 and the alignment trimmed using trimAl v1.4148. Phylogenetic analysis was carried out using RAxML139 under the PROTGAMMAGTR model, and 20 alternative runs on distinct starting trees. Non-parametric bootstrap analysis was carried out for 100 replicates.
For cobyric acid synthase and acetate/succinate transporter, the top BLAST hits from GenBank, and representative sequences from other taxonomic groups, were aligned with MAFFT v7.205137 (-auto), and alignments trimmed with trimal v1.4148. Phylogenetic analyses were performed using RAxML v8.2.8139 under the model that minimized the AIC (LG4X for cobyric acid synthase, LG4M for acetate transporter), based on 5 random-addition-sequence replicates, and 100 non-parametric bootstrap replicates.

Gene family expansions

We used three metrics to identify families in our Compara database (Methods) that varied greatly in gene count across species (see ref. 149). To control for fragmented assemblies, we used summed protein length per species (in a family) as a proxy for gene count in these metrics:
1. Coefficient of variation:
where s is the standard deviation in summed protein length per species, and
its mean.
2. Maximum Z-score:
where T is the set of non-overlapping species groups (‘Analysis group’ in Supplementary Table 4), c a group in T, index i refers to a particular species,
the mean of the summed protein length (per species) in c, and the standard deviation in summed protein length per species in species outside c.
3. Maximum enrichment coefficient:
To increase reliability, these metrics were calculated by only considering tier 1 species (those with high-quality assemblies; Methods). Our code for calculating metrics is available (see URLs).

SCP/TAPS

SCP/TAPS genes were identified as having Pfam PF00188, or being in a SCP/TAPS family in our Compara database (Methods). Those between 146 aa (shortest C. elegans SCP/TAPS) and 1,000 aa were included in the phylogenetic analysis (Supplementary Table 10). Clusters were detected among sequences from a species group (‘analysis group’ in Supplementary Table 4) using USEARCH150 (UCLUST, aa identity cut-off = 0.70), and a consensus sequence generated for each cluster. The consensus sequences were aligned using MAFFT137 (v7.271, –localpair –maxiterate 2 –retree 1 –bl 45); the alignment trimmed with trimAl148 (-gt 0.006); and a maximum likelihood tree built using FastTreeMP151 (v2.1.7 SSE3, -wag -gamma).

Proteins historically targeted for drug development

Each nematode/platyhelminth proteome was searched against candidate proteases using MEROPS batch-BLAST152 (E < 0.001), and PfamScan153 was used to identify additional homologues in some species (Supplementary Table 11).
Putative GPCRs, identified from the literature and GO:0004930 annotations in WormBase154, were used to identify families in our Compara database (Methods). For each family, HHSuite155 was used to search Uniprot, SCOPUS, Pfam, and PDB; 200 families hitting ≥2 databases were deemed actual GPCR families (see ref. 156). Additional families were identified from synapomorphies (Methods) and curation, giving 230 GPCR families (Supplementary Table 15).
To build a phylogenetic tree of ion channels, known genes from C. elegans157, Brugia malayi158, Haemonchus contortus159, Oesophagostomum dentatum159 and S. mansoni84 were gathered, and their homologues in Compara families in WormBase ParaSite160. Genes with <3 or="">8 transmembrane domains (predicted by HMMTOP161) were discarded. Genes were aligned with MAFFT137, and the alignment trimmed with trimAl148. The phylogeny was inferred with MrBayes3.2162. Posterior probabilities were calculated from eight reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo chains over 20,000,000 generations.
Kinase models were taken from Kinomer163, and thresholds optimized to detect known C. elegans kinases (see ref. 164). The final thresholds were used to filter HMMER search results (against Kinomer) for nematode and platyhelminth species (Supplementary Table 23).
C. elegans ABC transporter and cys-loop receptor subunit genes were collated from WormBase154, to which we added H. contortus acr-26 and acr-27 (absent from C. elegans85). Homologs in nematodes and platyhelminths were identified using BLASTP (Supplementary Tables 16 and 17).

GO and InterPro/Pfam annotation enrichment

Counts of proteins annotated with each GO term (or InterPro/Pfam domain) per species were normalized by dividing by the total GO annotations in a particular species. To test for enrichment of a particular GO term in a species group (‘analysis group’ in Supplementary Table 4), we used a Mann-Whitney U test to compare normalized counts in that species group, to those in all other species (Supplementary Table 24).

Metabolism

EC (Enzyme Commission number) predictions for nematodes and platyhelminths were derived by combining DETECT v2.0165, PRIAM166, KAAS167 and BRENDA168 (see ref. 169, Supplementary Fig. 28 and Supplementary Table 18), and supplemented for the 33 tier 1 species (Methods) by pathway hole-filling using Pathway Tools170 (v18.5). Comparisons of all 81 species (Supplementary Fig. 20a and Supplementary Table 20) did not include ECs from hole-filling. Lower confidence ECs were inferred using families from our Compara database (Methods). Auxotrophies were predicted using Pathway Tools and BioCyc171. To predict carbohydrate-active enzymes, HMMER3 was used to search dbCAN172 (Supplementary Table 25).
Pathway coverage was the fraction of ECs in a reference pathway that were annotated in a species (see ref. 173). We included pathways for which KEGG had a reference pathway for a nematode/platyhelminth (Supplementary Table 18e). Presence of KEGG modules was predicted using modDFS174, and species clustered based on module presence using Ward-linkage, based on Jaccard similarity index175.
Chokepoint enzymes were predicted following Taylor et al.176, using subnetworks of KEGG networks formed by just the enzymes (ECs) we had annotated in each particular species.

Potential anthelmintic drug targets and drugs

Potential drug targets

Nematode and platyhelminth proteins from tier 1 species (with high-quality assemblies; Methods) were searched against single-protein targets from ChEMBL v21177 using BLASTP (E ≤ 1 × 10−10). After collapsing by gene family, 1,925 worm genes remained.
To assign a ‘target score’ to each worm gene, the main factors considered were similarity to known drug targets; lack of human homologues; and whether C. elegans/Drosophila melanogaster homologues had lethal phenotypes (see ref. 178).

Potential new anthelmintic drugs

ChEMBL v21177 was used to identify 827,889 compounds with activities against ChEMBL targets to which worm proteins had BLAST matches. To calculate ‘compound scores’, we prioritized compounds in high clinical development phases, oral/topical administration, crystal structures, properties consistent with oral drugs and lacking toxicity (see ref. 178).
Our top 15% (249) of highest-scoring worm targets had 292,499 compounds. These were filtered by selecting compounds that (1) co-appeared in a PDBe179 (Protein Data Bank in Europe) structure with the ChEMBL target; or (2) had median pChEMBL > 5; leaving 131,452 ‘top drug candidates’.

A ‘diverse screening set’

The 131,452 candidates were placed into 27,944 chemical classes, based on ECFP4 fingerprints (see ref. 178). They were filtered by (1) discarding medicinal chemistry compounds that did not co-appear in a PDBe structure with the ChEMBL target, or have median pCHEMBL > 7; (2) checking availability for purchase in ZINC 15180; and (3) for each worm target, taking the highest-scoring compound from each class; this gave 5,046 compounds.

Self-organizing map

We constructed a self-organizing map of our diverse screening set plus known anthelmintic compounds (Supplementary Table 21a; see ref. 178), using Kohonen v3.02181 in R v3.3.0, using a 20 × 20 cell hexagonal, non-toroidal grid. The self-organizing map was trained for 4,000 steps, where training optimized Tanimoto distances between ECFP4 fingerprints.

Reporting Summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

Sequence data have been deposited in the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). Assemblies and annotation are available at WormBase and WormBase-ParaSite (https://parasite.wormbase.org/). All have been submitted to GenBank under the BioProject IDs listed in Supplementary Table 1.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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