Abstract
Nippostrongylus brasiliensis, a nematode parasite of rodents, has a parasitic life cycle that is an extremely useful model for the study of human hookworm infection, particularly in regards to the induced immune response. The current reference genome for this parasite is highly fragmented with minimal annotation, but new advances in long-read sequencing suggest that a more complete and annotated assembly should be an achievable goal. We de-novoassembled a single contig mitochondrial genome from N. brasiliensisusing MinION R9 nanopore data. The assembly was error-corrected using existing Illumina HiSeq reads, and annotated in full (i.e. gene boundary definitions without substantial gaps) by comparing with annotated genomes from similar parasite relatives. The mitochondrial genome has also been annotated with a preliminary electrical consensus sequence, using raw signal data generated from a Nanopore R9 flow cell.
Highlights
Nippostrongylus brasiliensis is a parasitic nematode that naturally infects rodents
N. brasiliensis L3 larvae infect the host through the skin and migrate to the lungs where they feed on red blood cells, causing extensive haemorrhage and anaemia – both hallmarks of hookworm infections
Comparison of Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) and MIMR N. brasiliensis strains After remapping the original R9 MinION reads back to the assembled and corrected genome with GraphMap[28], four locations were found with variant calls that contributed to more than 50% of the read coverage
Summary
Nippostrongylus brasiliensis is a parasitic nematode that naturally infects rodents. Its life cycle and morphology is comparable to Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale, and it is an excellent murine model of human hookworm infection, a disease that affects approximately 700 million people worldwide[1]. The immunology of N. brasiliensis infection has been studied extensively, and the parasite has been utilised as an inducer of potent Th2 responses in the lung and intestine, yielding important discoveries into cellular and molecular immune responses[3,4,5,6]. The N. brasiliensis model allows delineation of hookworm-induced immune profiles that could be targeted in drug or vaccine design, and provides a simple and wellcharacterised murine model in which to test these interventions for efficacy. To underpin these studies, a highquality reference genome is needed
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