Construction and use of a Trichinella spiralis phage display library to identify the interactions between parasite and host enterocytes

Although it has been known for many years that Trichinella spiralis initiates infection by penetrating the columnar epithelium of the small intestine, the mechanisms by which T. spiralis infective larvae recognize and invade the intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) are unknown. It is speculated that the molecular interactions between the parasite and host enterocytes may mediate the recognition and invasion of IECs by T. spiralis. However, no Trichinella proteins that interact with the enterocytes have been identified previously. The aim of this study was to identify Trichinella proteins that bind to IECs by screening a T7 phage display cDNA library constructed using messenger RNA from T. spiralis intestinal infective larvae. Following five rounds of biopanning, sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis, ten T. spiralis proteins (Tsp1–Tsp10) with significant binding to normal mouse IECs were identified. The results of the protein classification showed that six proteins (Tsp1, calcium-transporting ATPase 2 protein; Tsp4, ovochymase-1; Tsp6, T-complex protein 1 subunit eta; Tsp7, glycosyl hydrolase family 47; Tsp8, DNA replication licensing factor MCM3; and Tsp10, nudix hydrolase) of these T. spiralis proteins were annotated with putative molecular functions. Out of the six proteins, five have catalytic activity, four have binding activity, and one has transporter activity. Anti-Tsp10 antibodies prevented the in vitro partial invasion of IECs by infective larvae and the mice immunized with the recombinant phage T7-Tsp10 showed a 62.8 % reduction in adult worms following challenge with T. spiralis muscle larvae. Although their biological functions are not yet fully known, these proteins might be related to the larval invasion of host enterocytes. Future experiments will be necessary to ascertain whether these proteins play important roles in the recognition and invasion of host enterocytes. The construction and biopanning of Trichinella phage display libraries provide a novel approach for searching for candidate genes that are related to invasion and for identifying protein interactions between parasite and host.