About Ascaris lumbricoides
The nematode Ascaris lumbricoides, or human large roundworm, infects the small intestine of humans. Transmitted through ingestion of faecally-contaminated soil and water, it is most prevalent in areas where sanitation is poor and has a worldwide distribution. A. lumbricoides is the most common human parasitic infection, responsible for an estimated billion infections. Infections with A. lumbricoides is often asymptomatic and pathology is related to parasite burden. Heavily infected children may suffer poor appetite, growth stunting, and non-specific abdominal symptoms. Ascariasis is a common cause of acute surgical emergencies when obstruction of the intestine is caused by boluses of parasites or of the biliary system by the the aberrant migration of parasites. \n
Genome Assembly & Annotation
The draft genome assembly was produced by the Parasite Genomic group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, in collaboration with Philip Cooper (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK) as part of the 50 Helminth Genomes project. The assembly uses Illumina paired-end sequencing followed by an in-house genome assembly pipeline comprising various steps, including contig assembly, scaffolding, gap-filling and error-correction.
The gene predictions were made by the Parasite Genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and WormBase, as part of the 50 Helminth Genomes project. An in-house pipeline was developed that used MAKER to generate high-quality annotations by integrating evidence from multiple sources: ab initio gene predictions from AUGUSTUS, GeneMark-ES, and SNAP; projected annotation from C. elegans (using GenBlastG) and the taxonomically nearest reference helminth genome (using RATT); and ESTs, mRNAs and proteins from related organisms aligned to the genome using BLAST, with refinement of alignments using Exonerate.
- International Helminth Genomes Consortium. Comparative genomics of the major parasitic worms. Nat Genet, 2019;51(1):163-174
|Republic of Ecuador
|Wellcome Sanger Institute
This widget has been derived from the assembly-stats code developed by the Lepbase project at the University of Edinburgh