Complete assembly of the Schistosoma haematobium genome

Dr Neil Young and the team at The University of Melbourne, Australia have been working with DNAZoo to deliver a chromosome-length assembly of Schistosoma haematobium, a long-awaited, key genetic resource in the fight against schistosomiasis. Parwinder Kaur and her team at DNAzoo used in situ Hi-C to complete a chromosome-length assembly of S. haematobium, based on a draft hybrid assembly generated by Neil Young, Andreas Stroehlein, Pasi Korhnonen and Robin Gasser at the University of Melbourne. The draft genome assembly was created using existing short-read Illumina and Dovetail sequence libraries and new Oxford Nanopore long-read data. Genomic data was created with support from the National Health and Medical Council and Australian Research Council.

This new genomic resource for S. haematobium will enable detailed comparative genomic investigations of schistosomes, improve our understanding of urogenital schistosomiasis and assist in developing a new generation of interventions against schistosomes.