The Genome Institute, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(7):e21832. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0021832. Epub 2011 Jul 8.
A vast majority of the burden from neglected tropical diseases result from helminth infections (nematodes and platyhelminthes). Parasitic helminthes infect over 2 billion, exerting a high collective burden that rivals high-mortality conditions such as AIDS or malaria, and cause devastation to crops and livestock. The challenges to improve control of parasitic helminth infections are multi-fold and no single category of approaches will meet them all. New information such as helminth genomics, functional genomics and proteomics coupled with innovative bioinformatic approaches provide fundamental molecular information about these parasites, accelerating both basic research as well as development of effective diagnostics, vaccines and new drugs. To facilitate such studies we have developed an online resource, HelmCoP (Helminth Control and Prevention), built by integrating functional, structural and comparative genomic data from plant, animal and human helminthes, to enable researchers to develop strategies for drug, vaccine and pesticide prioritization, while also providing a useful comparative genomics platform. HelmCoP encompasses genomic data from several hosts, including model organisms, along with a comprehensive suite of structural and functional annotations, to assist in comparative analyses and to study host-parasite interactions. The HelmCoP interface, with a sophisticated query engine as a backbone, allows users to search for multi-factorial combinations of properties and serves readily accessible information that will assist in the identification of various genes of interest. HelmCoP is publicly available at: http://www.nematode.net/helmcop.html.
绝大多数被忽视的热带病负担源于蠕虫感染（线虫和扁形动物）。寄生虫感染了超过 20 亿人，造成了与艾滋病或疟疾等高死亡率疾病相当的高集体负担，并对农作物和牲畜造成破坏。改善寄生虫蠕虫感染控制的挑战是多方面的，没有单一类别的方法可以解决所有问题。新的信息，如蠕虫基因组学、功能基因组学和蛋白质组学，加上创新的生物信息学方法，为这些寄生虫提供了基本的分子信息，加速了基础研究以及有效诊断、疫苗和新药的开发。为了促进这些研究，我们开发了一个在线资源，HelmCoP（蠕虫控制和预防），通过整合来自植物、动物和人类蠕虫的功能、结构和比较基因组数据来构建，使研究人员能够制定药物、疫苗和杀虫剂的优先排序策略，同时也提供了一个有用的比较基因组学平台。HelmCoP 包含来自多个宿主的基因组数据，包括模式生物，以及一套全面的结构和功能注释，以协助进行比较分析，并研究宿主-寄生虫相互作用。HelmCoP 界面以复杂的查询引擎为骨干，允许用户搜索多种因素组合的属性，并提供易于访问的信息，以帮助识别各种感兴趣的基因。HelmCoP 可在以下网址获得：http://www.nematode.net/helmcop.html。
