The Project

The Neospora caninum genome project at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a joint collaboration with Dr Jonathan Wastling and Prof Sandy Trees (Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Liverpool, UK), and is funded by the BBSRC. The strain chosen to be sequenced is Neospora caninum NC Liverpool.

Background

Neospora caninum is a protozoan parasite of the phylum Apicomplexa that has emerged as a global pathogen of major importance in cattle and dogs. N. caninum is a facultative heteroxenous parasite with the dog as a definitive host. Transmission may occur from dogs to cattle and vice versa, and /or transplacental transmission can occur in either cows or dogs. N. caninum is recognised as the major diagnosed cause of abortion in dairy cattle. In economic terms it therefore ranks alongside other major veterinary protozoan parasites such as Eimeria spp., Toxoplasma gondii and Cryptosporidium parvum. Although similar to T. gondii in morphological and some biological characteristics, N. caninum is readily distinguishable both serologically and genetically and thus has been placed in a separate genus. Biologically there are many interesting differences from T. gondii. Most significantly, in contrast to T. gondii, N. caninum does not appear to infect humans. Neospora is therefore an important model for comparative genomics on the conserved biology of apicomplexan parasites, such as parasite-specific metabolic pathways, virulence, invasion biology, stage-differentiation and modulation of host cells.

Progress

The latest N. caninum sequence data is available via ftp and is also searchable via our BLAST server.