Cryptosporidium parvum gene discovery

Abstract

Cryptosporidium parvum is a well-recognized cause of diarrhea in humans and animals throughout the world, and is associated with a substantial degree of morbidity and mortality in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). At the present time, there is no effective therapy for treating or preventing infection with C. parvum. This is primarily due to a lack of understanding of the basic cellular and molecular biology of this pathogen in terms of virulence factors, genome structure, gene expression, and regulation. Over the past few years, large-scale sequencing of randomly selected cDNAs or fragments of genomic DNA has proven to be an efficient approach for obtaining large amount of genomic information. Recently, large-scale sporozoite expressed sequence tag (EST) and genomic sequence tag (GST) projects have been initiated for C. parvum. These projects have greatly increased the number of C. parvum genes identified and demonstrate the usefulness of large-scale sequencing for expanding our understanding of C. parvum biology. Continued characterization of the C. parvum genome will increase our basic understanding of the cellular and molecular biology of C. parvum in terms of gene and genome structure, and will identify key metabolic and pathophysiologic features of the organism for future development of safe and effective strategies for prevention and treatment of disease.