Fig. 1: Agarose gel of the first nested PCR attempt with the nested template and two toehold primers. PCR products 1 and 3 show the expected length, while lane 2 and 4 show, as anticipated, the failure of the negative controls. 1-nested PCR of switch 898 2-negative control of switch 898 (without P1) 3-nested PCR of switch 16 4-negative control of switch 16 (without P1)

Preliminary Data (Bioinformatics)

We started the project knowing that there is only one potential target RNA published from T. solium. For this reason one of our main goals was to shed light into the transcriptome of T. solium with a special focus on T. solium eggs, which are excreted with stool and easily accessible for diagnosis. We reached this goal by obtaining raw RNAseq data of the whole worm from GEO database (GSM2227058) and mapped it against a published genome of T. solium (PRJNA170813). We identified 215 potential targets for sensor development by mapping the transcripts against tapeworms that our test should not detect (like T.asiatica and T.saginata)

>> Click on the picture to discover our targets on an interactive map! Despite this first success we continued our efforts describe the transcriptome of eggs from T. solium for the first time, since RNA expression in eggs may differ from the whole organism. We reached this goal by building transcontinental research collaborations to India.

>> Learn how we became to our knowledge the first group to describe the transcriptome of T. solium eggs