Collecting Schistosoma japonicum eggs from mouse tissues

Authors Yung-san Liang, Mei-Shei Su, and Laksiri Karunaratne

Introduction
The procedure for collection of S. japonicum eggs from mouse tissues is essentially the same as that used for collecting S. mansoni eggs from mouse tissues. Recoverable S. japonicum eggs will be found in the liver and in the intestinal walls.

 Equipment
Spray apparatus (2-gallon  pump-type, typically found in hardware stores)
Stainless steel sieves of decreasing pore sizes (Newark Wire Cloth; mesh openings of 420 µm,
180 µm, 105 µm, and 45 µm) (Figure)
Dissecting instruments
Waring blender with variable speed control
Glass petri dishes (100 mm diameter) with flat bottoms
Falcon #2340 cell strainer, 40 µm nylon (Figure)
Pasteur pipettes
Light box

Materials and reagents
1.2% NaCl (2 liters)
S. japonicum-infected mice

Procedure
See SOP  for collection of S. mansoni eggs from tissues

Follow-up comments/recommendations
S. japonicum eggs are smaller than those of S. mansoni. As a consequence, 1 ml of the settled egg pellet will contain approximately 1,000,000 eggs.

References
Tucker, M. S., Karunaratne, L. B., Lewis, F. A., Frietas, T. C., and Liang, Y-S. 2013. Schistosomiasis, in Current Protocols in Immunology 19.1.1-19.1.57, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., (R. Coico, Ed).  Published online November 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). doi: 10.1002/0471142735.im1901s103.