Advances of genetic manipulations in helminth parasites / 中国热带医学

ABSTRACT

@#Abstract: Approximately 2 billion people worldwide are infected with helminths and the resulting helminthiasis is a heavy health burden for developing countries. Parasitic helminths are a class of multicellular parasites, mainly including trematodes, tapeworms and nematodes, wtih complex life cycle involving multiple developmental stages and typically one or more hosts. Understanding the growth, development, pathogenesis and transmission of these parasites at the molecular level is of great significance for the diagnosis and treatment of helminthiasis. Genetic manipulations, which alter the expression level of target genes, have greatly promoted the biomedical research. In recent years, with the release of genomic data of worms, genetic manipulation techniques, such as RNA interference and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) gene editing, have been increasingly applied in the studies of parasitic helminths. This article reviews the progress of genetic manipulations in important medical worms, as well as the methods of genetic manipulations, which would be expected to inspire the future functional study in parasitic helminths.