ipcress is a great and simple tool for in silico PCR. it's pretty fast and can handle mismatches. Here is a gist from someone that have all relevant information: gist.github.com/cfljam/e0d11...

Actually, it is also called "coco-fesses" in French (which literally means "butt coconut"). We have one in the family, with some suggestive fibers, very similar to the picture below (source: lodoiceamaldivica.wordpress.com/cocofesse/)

Side story: This paper wraps up Lauren’s work (@lvcarruthers on the other site) from her summer internship at @texasbiomed.bsky.social. Stephanie (@StephCara on the other site), former intern and former PhD student, also contributed. Congrats to Lauren, Stephanie, and all co-authors! 🎉

Overall, these results highlight the need to study microbiomes separately to avoid masking key changes and to better capture microbiome dynamics, especially during parasite infection 🦠🐌🪱. This will be the focus of an upcoming paper from Stephanie.

How many bacteria are in these organs? We performed qPCR and normalized by cell number (organs, whole snails) or volume (hemolymph, water). The digestive system (stomach and gut) showed the highest density, while levels were more variable in the hepatopancreas and low in the ovotestis.

How are these taxa shared between organs? They are mostly sample-type specific, especially in the hemolymph and ovotestis. Hemolymph and whole snail share the most taxa. Some taxa are snail-specific, suggesting internal conditions favor them, while others are found in snails and water.

Taxonomic diversity revealed a surprising number of unknown taxa in the hepatopancreas and ovotestis. These organ microbiomes warrant further study to characterize these mysterious taxa. Taxonomic diversity of the whole snail microbiomes was similar to the hemolymph microbiome diversity.

These organ microbiomes were different from the hemolymph, specific, and either linked by physical proximity or functionnality, depending on the beta-diversity metrics used. The whole snail microbiome was consistently close to the hemolymph microbiome.

Organs harbored microbiomes with varying microbial diversity. Hemolymph showed the highest alpha-diversity, similar to the whole snail microbiome. Sample type (organs and hemolymph) was the primary factor explaining microbial diversity before the snail species.

We chose stomach/gut (commonly studied), hepatopancreas (liver), and ovotestis (targeted by schistosomes 🪱) from uninfected snails of 2 Biomphalaria species. We also analyzed whole-snail 🐌 microbiomes (commonly studied) to test if they truly reflect the composite of individual organ microbiomes.

We showed a few years ago that the hemolymph (blood 🩸) of the Biomphalaria snails harbor a diverse microbiome (doi.org/10.1111/1462...). This finding prompted us to look at the organs bathed by the hemolymph and investigate if they had a microbiome and how specific it was compared to the hemolymph.

As the Massif Central is a highland between the Alps and the Pyrenees, we more likely see the effect of both the Mistral wind (between the Alps and Massif Central) and the Tramontane wind (between the Massif Central and the Pyrenees).

Hi Erik!

Could you please add me to the Science feed? I am working on schistosome, snail and microbiome. This is me:
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-26...
Webpage: www.txbiomed.org/scientists/f...

Thank you!

This should be our next model organism. What a hell of a snail!

I did not know about the cult though. Should we start one with ours 🤔? We definitely have worms that can make people sick.

Anyway, thank you @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social for point this out to me.