BioProject

This data is part of a pre-publication release. For information on the proper use of pre-publication data shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (including details of any publication moratoria), please see http://www. More...

This data is part of a pre-publication release. For information on the proper use of pre-publication data shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (including details of any publication moratoria), please see http://www.sanger.ac.uk/datasharing/ The sheep parasite Haemonchus contortus, and related trichostrongylid nematodes, is a major pest to farming, resulting in significant economic losses and morbidity and mortality in sheep flocks worldwide. More significantly, these parasites have become models for investigating the genetics of host resistance to anthelminthic drugs, as intensive agricultural practice involves administering large quantities of prophylactic treatment, resulting in resistance to anthelminthics generally emerging in sheep parasites well before it emerges in human populations. We have produced a draft genome for the ISE isolate of Haemonchus contortus and one isolate of the cattle parasite Haemonchus placei, and now want to exploit these sequences as a platform for investigating the genetics of resistance to avermectins, the most important class of nematicidal drugs in agriculture, and a mainstay of mass-drug administration regimes against human helminthiases such as onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis. We plan to address the genetics of avermectin resistance in haemonchus by genotyping worms in a genetic cross experiment. We also plan to genotype individual worms from UK farms with a history of intensive ivermectin use and from organic farms with no history of antihelminthic use. Together, these experiments should produce robust information about the genetics of resistance to the most important antihelminthic drug in the field, in an economically important parasite of both temperate and tropical agriculture. Less...