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:
Haemonchus genomes published
We would like to congratulate the Berriman and Gasser labs to their articles on the Australian and European Haemonchus contortus genome assemblies published in the most recent edition of Genome Biology
Both assemblies will be available at WormBase as part of the upcoming WS239 release.
Genomics of Loa loa, a Wolbachia-free filarial parasite of humans
Congratulations to the Broad institute, as their Loa loa genome (shown on WormBase) has been successfully published in Nature Genetics.
Nat Genet. 2013 Mar 24. doi: 10.1038/ng.2585.
Genomics of Loa loa, a Wolbachia-free filarial parasite of humans.
Desjardins CA, Cerqueira GC, Goldberg JM, Hotopp JC, Haas BJ, Zucker J, Ribeiro JM, Saif S, Levin JZ, Fan L, Zeng Q,Russ C, Wortman JR, Fink DL, Birren BW, Nutman TB.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Loa loa, the African eyeworm, is a major filarial pathogen of humans. Unlike most filariae, L. loa does not contain the obligate intracellular Wolbachia endosymbiont. We describe the 91.4-Mb genome of L. loa and that of the related filarial parasite Wuchereria bancrofti and predict 14,907 L. loa genes on the basis of microfilarial RNA sequencing. By comparing these genomes to that of another filarial parasite, Brugia malayi, and to those of several other nematodes, we demonstrate synteny among filariae but not with nonparasitic nematodes. The L. loa genome encodes many immunologically relevant genes, as well as protein kinases targeted by drugs currently approved for use in humans. Despite lacking Wolbachia, L. loa shows no new metabolic synthesis or transport capabilities compared to other filariae. These results suggest that the role of Wolbachia in filarial biology is more subtle than previously thought and reveal marked differences between parasitic and nonparasitic nematodes.
Featured Paper: The origin and function of anti-fungal peptides in C. elegans
The origin and function of anti-fungal peptides in C. elegans: open questions
by Nathalie Pujol, Paul A. Davis* and Jonathan J. Ewbank
This paper describes a gene-class of short proteins expressed during fungal challenge and covers most nematodes included in WormBase.
Front Immunol. 2012;3:237. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2012.00237. Epub 2012 Aug 1.
*Disclaimer: Paul Davis is a WormBase curator at the EBI
Bursaphelenchus xylophilus on WormBase
The newly published Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (Kikuchi et.al) is as of WS229 available at WormBase including it’s gene set. The data are available as GFF3 and FASTA files for download, and has been added to GBrowse and BLAST.
Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is a pine parasite causing considerable economic damage and can give insights into evolution of plant parasites by comparing it, for example, to Meloidogyne.