Genomic Characterization of Strain Cheeloo.

, a tick-borne intracellular protozoan, can cause infections of various livestock and wildlife around the world, posing a threat to veterinary health. Although more and more species have been identified, genomes have been available only from four species to date. Here, we assembled a whole genome of , an emerging , through next-generation sequencing of purified erythrocytes from the blood of a naturally infected goat. We designated it str. Cheeloo because its genome was assembled by the researchers at Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, China. The genome of str. Cheeloo was the smallest in comparison with the other four species. str. Cheeloo possessed the fewest gene gains and gene family expansion. The protein count of each category was always comparable between str. Cheeloo and str. Shintoku in the Eukaryote Orthologs annotation, though there were remarkable differences in genome size. str. Cheeloo had lower counts than the other four species in most categories at level 3 of Gene Ontology annotation. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes annotation revealed a loss of the c-Myb in str. Cheeloo. The infection rate of str. Cheeloo was up to 81.5% in a total of 54 goats from three flocks. The phylogenetic analyses based on both 18S rRNA and genes indicated that had relatively low diversity. The first characterization of the genome will promote better understanding of the emerging . has led to substantial economic losses in animal husbandry. Whole-genome sequencing data of the genus are currently limited, which has prohibited us from further understanding their molecular features. This work depicted whole-genome sequences of str. Cheeloo, an emerging species, and reported a high prevalence of str. Cheeloo infection in goats. The first assembly and characterization of genome will benefit exploring the infective and pathogenic mechanisms of the emerging to provide scientific basis for future control strategies of theileriosis.