Role of Antimicrobial Peptides in Immunity of Parasitic Leeches.

The review summarizes the current state of knowledge about leech immunity, with emphasis on the special role of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), and highlights the wide variety of primary AMP structures, which seem to correlate with a variety of life strategies and the ecology of ectoparasites. Antimicrobial proteins and AMPs are a diverse class of natural molecules that are produced in all living organisms in response to an attack by a pathogen and are essential components of the immune system. AMPs can have a wide range of antibiotic activities against foreign and opportunistic bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

First data on the Hirudinea fauna of lotic ecosystems of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area (Russia).

Hirudinea, a small and ecologically important group of aquatic organisms, is poorly studied in northern Eurasia. In this study, we demyth the idea of the faunistic poverty of this region and present the first findings of rheophilic leeches from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, Russia. Investigation of 25 rivers (Severnaya Sosva, Ob, Konda-Irtysh, and Bolshoi Yugan river basins) resulted in finding 10 leech species with parasitic and non-parasitic life strategies.

Amazing Discoveries of Benthic Fauna from the Abyssal Zone of Lake Baikal.

Lake Baikal is a natural laboratory for the study of species diversity and evolution, as a unique freshwater ecosystem meeting the all of the main criteria of the World Heritage Convention. However, despite many years of research, the true biodiversity of the lake is clearly insufficiently studied, especially that of deep-water benthic sessile organisms. For the first time, plastic waste was raised from depths of 110 to 190 m of Lake Baikal.

The first mitochondrial genome of sp. (Hirudinea, piscicolidae), an endemic leech species from Lake Baikal, Russia and reassembly of the data from SRA.

In this study, we assembled a complete mitochondrial genome of sp. sample from Lake Baikal, Russia and reassembled third party raw data of . Mitogenomes of both freshwater piscine leeches consist of 37 genes, including 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal genes (12S and 16S), 22 transport RNA genes, and one control region.