Link to bioRxiv paper:
http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.06.21.545858v1?rss=1
Authors: Nedvedova, S., De Stefano, D., Walker, O., Hologne, M., Miele, A. E.
Abstract:
Genome sequencing of the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni revealed an interesting gene superfamily called micro-exon gene (MEG) that encodes MEG secreted proteins. The genes are composed of short exons (3-81 base pairs) with symmetrically inserted long introns (up to 5 kbp). This article recollects 35 S. mansoni specific meg genes that are distributed over 7 autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes and that code for at least 87 verified MEG proteins. We used various bioinformatics tools to produce an optimal alignment, propose a phylogenetic analysis and highlight intriguing conserved patterns/motifs in the sequences of these MEG proteins. Based on the analyses, we were able to classify the MEG proteins into two subfamilies and to hypothesize their duplication and colonization of all the chromosomes. Together with motif identification, we also proposed to revisit MEGs' common names and annotation in order to avoid duplication, to help reproducibility of research results and to avoid possible misunderstandings.
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