Genetic basis for virulence differences of various Cryptosporidium parvum carcinogenic isolates

Cryptosporidium parvum is known to cause life-threatening diarrhea in immunocompromised hosts and was also reported to be capable of inducing digestive adenocarcinoma in a rodent model. Interestingly, three carcinogenic isolates of C. parvum, called DID, TUM1 and CHR, obtained from fecal samples of naturally infected animals or humans, showed higher virulence than the commercially available C. parvum IOWA isolate in our animal model in terms of clinical manifestations, mortality rate and time of onset of neoplastic lesions. In order to discover the potential genetic basis of the differential virulence observed between C. parvum isolates and to contribute to the understanding of Cryptosporidium virulence, entire genomes of the isolates DID, TUM1 and CHR were sequenced then compared to the C. parvum IOWA reference genome. 125 common SNVs corresponding to 90 CDSs were found in the C. parvum genome that could explain this differential virulence. In particular variants in several membrane and secreted proteins were identified. Besides the genes already known to be involved in parasite virulence, this study identified potential new virulence factors whose functional characterization can be achieved through CRISPR/Cas9 technology applied to this parasite.