Daphnia galeata responds to the exposure to an ichthyosporean gut parasite by down-regulation of immunity and lipid metabolism

Background Regulatory circuits of infection in the emerging experimental model system, water flea Daphnia and their microparasites, remain largely unknown. Here we provide the first molecular insights into the response of Daphnia galeata to its highly virulent and common parasite Caullerya mesnili, an ichthyosporean that infects the gut epithelium. We generated a transcriptomic dataset using RNAseq from parasite-exposed (vs. control) Daphnia, at two time points (4 and 48 h) after parasite exposure.