Perspective Chapter: Parasitic Platyhelminthes Nuclear Receptors as Molecular Crossroads

Abstract

Thanks to the increasing availability of the parasitic Platyhelminthes genomes in recent years, several studies have been directed to the identification of the nuclear receptors set expressed by these organisms. Nevertheless, important gaps in our knowledge remain to be addressed, concerning their mechanism of action, ligands, co-regulator proteins, and DNA binding sequences on target genes. The proposed review chapter will be an account of research into the nuclear receptors field of parasitic Platyhelminthes. Several in vitro effects of host steroid hormones on Taenia and Echinococcus species were observed, however, the classical mammalian estrogen, androgen, or progesterone receptors could not be identified in databases. Nonetheless, novel nuclear receptors and related proteins and genes, are being identified and characterized. The elucidation of their target genes as well as ligands in parasitic Platyhelminthes could allow discovery of new and specific pathways differing from those of their hosts. In this sense, these parasitic proteins seem to be good putative targets of new drugs.