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.