The mitochondrial genomes of Ancylostoma caninum and Bunostomum phlebotomum--two hookworms of animal health and zoonotic importance

Our wormy world genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics in East and southeast Asia

Helminths are the cause of some of the major infectious diseases of humanity in what is still a "wormy" world. There is, in East and Southeast Asia, a high prevalence of several helminthiases which occur primarily in rural, impoverished areas of low-income and developing countries throughout the tropics and subtropics. Subsequent to various parasite genome projects that commenced in the early 1990s, under the aegis of the World Health Organization (WHO), the draft genomes of three major helminth species (Schistosoma japonicum, S. mansoni and Brugia malayi) have been sequenced, and many other helminth parasites have now been targeted for intensive genomics investigation. The continuing release of genome sequences has catalyzed the emergence of transcriptomics, proteomics and related "-omics" analyses of helminth parasites, which provide unprecedented approaches to understanding their biology that will result in new clues for the development of novel control interventions. In this review, we present a summary of current approaches employed in helminth "-omics" studies and review recent advances in helminth genomics and post-genomics in the Southeast Asian setting.

An integrated pipeline for next-generation sequencing and annotation of mitochondrial genomes

Mitochondrial (mt) genomics represents an understudied but important field of molecular biology. Increasingly, mt dysfunction is being linked to a range of human diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes and impairment of childhood development. In addition, mt genomes provide important markers for systematic, evolutionary and population genetic studies. Some technological limitations have prevented the expanded generation and utilization of mt genomic data for some groups of organisms. These obstacles most acutely impede, but are not limited to, studies requiring the determination of complete mt genomic data from minute amounts of material (e.g. biopsy samples or microscopic organisms). Furthermore, post-sequencing bioinformatic annotation and analyses of mt genomes are time consuming and inefficient. Herein, we describe a high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatic pipeline for mt genomics, which will have implications for the annotation and analysis of other organellar (e.g. plastid or apicoplast genomes) and virus genomes as well as long, contiguous regions in nuclear genomes. We utilize this pipeline to sequence and annotate the complete mt genomes of 12 species of parasitic nematode (order Strongylida) simultaneously, each from an individual organism. These mt genomic data provide a rich source of markers for studies of the systematics and population genetics of a group of socioeconomically important pathogens of humans and other animals.