Ancylostoma ceylanicum

The parasitic nematode Ancylostoma ceylanicum is a hookworm, closely related to the hookworms Ancylostoma duodenale and to Necator americanus.

These three species collectively infect over 500 million human beings, typically by burrowing into the skin as dauer-like L3 larvae, passing through the bloodstream and lungs, being swallowed along with mucus cleaning the lungs, and becoming permanently established as blood-drinking adults in the small intestine.

Despite the great difference in their life cycles from that of C. elegans, hookworms (and related parasites such as Haemonchus contortus) are actually more closely related to C. elegans than is the free-living nematode Pristionchus pacificus.

The bulk of hookworm infections are by A. duodenale and N. americanus; however, these two species do not generally infect other mammals, making them difficult to study experimentally. In contrast, A. ceylanicum competently infects humans, dogs, cats, and golden hamsters, making it an experimentally tractable human hookworm as well as an emerging zoonotic parasite (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23968813). Researchers at Cornell, Caltech, and UCSD have therefore sequenced the genome and transcriptome of A. ceylanicum in order to determine possible new targets for drugs and vaccines.

Its genome has been included as part of the WS243 release of WormBase and is shown on a Genome Browser, as well as on orthology sections of genes. Flatfiles of the raw data are also available on ftp://ftp.wormbase.org.

A Streamlined System for Species Diagnosis in Caenorhabditis

We would like to congratulate Marie-Anne Felix, Asher Cutter and Christian Braendle on their publication in PLoS One, which describes new name designations for 15 new nematode species.

Of special interest to WormBase users:

  • C.sp 7 will become Caenorhabditis afra
  • C.sp 11 will become Caenorhabditis tropicalis
  • Update of Meloydogyne incognita

    The new WormBase release of WS243 will include an update to the Meloidogyne incognita assembly, which is based on scaffolding the original data published in 2008.
    It will be available from the M.incognita section of the WormBase FTP site, as well as from a Genome Browser and as orthologs from already existing gene pages.

    Users wishing use M. incognita data obtained from WormBase in publication should cite the following:

    Abad P et al. Genome sequence of the metazoan plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne incognita. Nat Biotechnol. 2008 Aug;26(8):909-15.

    new Pristionchus species in WS243

    Thanks to the contribution of new sequencing data on Pristionchus spp. populations as described in “Characterization of genetic diversity in the nematode Pristionchus pacificus from population-scale resequencing data” by Christian Roedelsperger, et.al, published in Genetics, the next WormBase release (WS243) will include Pristionchus exspectatus as a new species.

    The new data will be available through the FTP site, a Genome Browser and as orthologs from already existing gene pages.