Wolbachia

The Sanger Institute has been funded by Beowulf Genomics to sequence the genome of the Wolbachia-like endosymbiont of Onchocerca volvulus, in collaboration with Dr. Mark Blaxter of the Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, Dr. Mark Taylor of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Dr. Achim Hoerauf of the Bernard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany, and Dr. Barton Slatko of New England Bioloabs, Inc, USA.

The nematode Onchocerca volvulus is the cause of onchocerciasis (river blindness) in West Africa and Central America. The nematode contains an endosymbiotic bacterium related to the Wolbachia reproductive parasites of arthropods.

The genome of the endosymbiont is estimated to be 1.1 Mb, and will be sequenced from lambda clones identified by a clone-walking strategy.

Unfinished assembled shotgun sequences from these lambda clones are available for searching through our BLAST server, and for download from our FTP site.

At present there are 6 contigs from 6 clones with a total size of 92.997 kb.

Assembly warning

Please note that the assembly database consists of unedited automatic assemblies; it will contain errors and misassemblies, along with E. coli and vector contamination. The contig numbers are not stable, and will vary with each data release. The sequences in the shotgun database are single reads from ABI sequencers; they will contain errors, along with both E. coli and vector contamination.

Data Release Statement

This sequencing centre plans on publishing the completed and annotated sequences in a peer-reviewed journal as soon as possible. Permission of the principal investigator should be obtained before publishing analyses of the sequence/open reading frames/genes on a chromosome or genome scale.

Other sites that may be of interest:

The Filarial Genome Network

Sequencing enquiries

Please address all sequencing enquiries to: parkhill@sanger.ac.uk

webmaster@sanger.ac.uk

Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK Tel:+44 (0)1223 834244

Last Modified Thu Apr 22 16:44:23 2004

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