TY - JOUR
T1 - High-quality reference genome for Clonorchis sinensis
AU - Young, Neil D.
AU - Stroehlein, Andreas J.
AU - Kinkar, Liina
AU - Wang, Tao
AU - Sohn, Woon Mok
AU - Chang, Bill C.H.
AU - Kaur, Parwinder
AU - Weisz, David
AU - Dudchenko, Olga
AU - Aiden, Erez Lieberman
AU - Korhonen, Pasi K.
AU - Gasser, Robin B.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - The Chinese liver fluke, Clonorchis sinensis, causes the disease clonorchiasis, affecting ~35 million people in regions of China, Vietnam, Korea and the Russian Far East. Chronic clonorchiasis causes cholangitis and can induce a malignant cancer, called cholangiocarcinoma, in the biliary system. Control in endemic regions is challenging, and often relies largely on chemotherapy with one anthelmintic, called praziquantel. Routine treatment carries a significant risk of inducing resistance to this anthelmintic in the fluke, such that the discovery of new interventions is considered important. It is hoped that the use of molecular technologies will assist this endeavour by enabling the identification of drug or vaccine targets involved in crucial biological processes and/or pathways in the parasite. Although draft genomes of C. sinensis have been published, their assemblies are fragmented. In the present study, we tackle this genome fragmentation issue by utilising, in an integrated way, advanced (second- and third-generation) DNA sequencing and informatic approaches to build a high-quality reference genome for C. sinensis, with chromosome-level contiguity and curated gene models. This substantially-enhanced genome provides a resource that could accelerate fundamental and applied molecular investigations of C. sinensis, clonorchiasis and/or cholangiocarcinoma, and assist in the discovery of new interventions against what is a highly significant, but neglected disease-complex.
AB - The Chinese liver fluke, Clonorchis sinensis, causes the disease clonorchiasis, affecting ~35 million people in regions of China, Vietnam, Korea and the Russian Far East. Chronic clonorchiasis causes cholangitis and can induce a malignant cancer, called cholangiocarcinoma, in the biliary system. Control in endemic regions is challenging, and often relies largely on chemotherapy with one anthelmintic, called praziquantel. Routine treatment carries a significant risk of inducing resistance to this anthelmintic in the fluke, such that the discovery of new interventions is considered important. It is hoped that the use of molecular technologies will assist this endeavour by enabling the identification of drug or vaccine targets involved in crucial biological processes and/or pathways in the parasite. Although draft genomes of C. sinensis have been published, their assemblies are fragmented. In the present study, we tackle this genome fragmentation issue by utilising, in an integrated way, advanced (second- and third-generation) DNA sequencing and informatic approaches to build a high-quality reference genome for C. sinensis, with chromosome-level contiguity and curated gene models. This substantially-enhanced genome provides a resource that could accelerate fundamental and applied molecular investigations of C. sinensis, clonorchiasis and/or cholangiocarcinoma, and assist in the discovery of new interventions against what is a highly significant, but neglected disease-complex.
KW - Advanced bioinformatics
KW - Chinese liver fluke
KW - Clonorchis sinensis
KW - Reference genome
KW - Third-generation sequencing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104408882&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ygeno.2021.03.001
DO - 10.1016/j.ygeno.2021.03.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 33677057
AN - SCOPUS:85104408882
VL - 113
SP - 1605
EP - 1615
JO - Genomics
JF - Genomics
SN - 0888-7543
IS - 3
ER -