Brief overview

Onchocerca volvulus is a filarial nematode parasite of humans, causing Onchocerciasis, or River Blindness, which affects over 37 million people, mainly in Africa. It is a severely debilitating disease, which is transmitted to humans by black fly.

The Project

This is a Wellcome Trust funded project to sequence and analyse the nuclear genome of O. volvulus with the goal of producing reference quality genome sequence.

Sequence data are being produced using 454 rapid sequencing technology and Illumina sequencing.

Collaborators

We are collaborating with Dr Sara Lustigman, New York Blood Center.

Accessing Sequence data

Data are being made available on our ftp site and blast server as they become available.

Currently, there are 51274 contigs (94.02 MB of sequence), including 39164 large (size >= 500bp) contigs (90.20 MB of sequence), available to download.

Please note that this sequence is unchecked and unedited, and will contain errors. The 454 is known to have problems with homopolymeric tracts, and these are therefore likely to contain significant numbers of errors.