Young Neil D, Stroehlein Andreas J, Kinkar Liina, Wang Tao, Sohn Woon-Mok, Chang Bill C H, Kaur Parwinder, Weisz David, Dudchenko Olga, Aiden Erez Lieberman, Korhonen Pasi K, Gasser Robin B
Department of Veterinary Biosciences, Melbourne Veterinary School, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Department of Veterinary Biosciences, Melbourne Veterinary School, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
Genomics. 2021 May;113(3):1605-1615. doi: 10.1016/j.ygeno.2021.03.001. Epub 2021 Mar 4.
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.
华支睾吸虫（Clonorchis sinensis）可引发华支睾吸虫病，在中国、越南、韩国及俄罗斯远东地区，约有3500万人受其影响。慢性华支睾吸虫病会导致胆管炎，并可能在胆道系统诱发一种名为胆管癌的恶性肿瘤。在流行地区进行疾病控制颇具挑战，且通常很大程度上依赖于使用一种名为吡喹酮的驱虫药进行化疗。常规治疗存在使吸虫对这种驱虫药产生耐药性的重大风险，因此，发现新的干预措施被认为很重要。人们希望利用分子技术，通过识别寄生虫关键生物过程和/或途径中涉及的药物或疫苗靶点，来助力这一努力。尽管华支睾吸虫的基因组草图已发表，但其组装结果是碎片化的。在本研究中，我们通过综合运用先进的（第二代和第三代）DNA测序及信息学方法，解决基因组碎片化问题，构建了一个具有染色体水平连续性和经过整理的基因模型的高质量华支睾吸虫参考基因组。这个大幅改进的基因组提供了一种资源，可加速对华支睾吸虫、华支睾吸虫病和/或胆管癌的基础及应用分子研究，并有助于发现针对这一极具重要性但被忽视的疾病复合体的新干预措施。
