The genomes of more than 3,000 bacteria, including some of the world’s most dangerous, have been sequenced by researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in collaboration with Pacific Biosciences (PacBio). Infecting tens of millions of people worldwide every year, these bacteria have been collected by the National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC) and include deadly strains of plague, dysentery and cholera.

The course ‘Bacterial Genomes: From DNA to protein function using bioinformatics’ was developed by researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Designed to teach researchers, students and health care professionals worldwide how to use online computational tools and databases to understand the roles bacterial genes play in health and disease, the course is free, and is open for enrolment now, with the course starting on 11 June 2018.

The evolutionary path of the deadliest human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, has been revealed for the first time. This parasite is a member of the Laverania parasite family that only infect the great apes including humans, chimpanzees and gorillas. Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators estimate that Plasmodium falciparum emerged as a human-specific parasite species earlier than previously thought. The study in Nature Microbiology gives clues to how deadly parasites emerge.

Reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the study has also established an open genomic database of gonorrhoea. The new resource will support real-time ongoing surveillance of gonorrhoea worldwide, which public health officials could use to monitor which strains of gonorrhoea are present globally and where new antibiotic resistance is emerging.

Today (14 May 2018) Dr Peter Campbell joins 61 fellow researchers from 24 countries in being elected to membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). EMBO was created to promote excellence in molecular life sciences in Europe and each year recognises new members on the basis of scientific excellence.

Wellcome Sanger Institute Group Leaders Professor Nicole Soranzo and Dr David Adams are two of 48 world-leading scientists being honoured by the Academy of Medical Sciences for their outstanding contribution to biomedical science. David and Nicole were chosen from 410 candidates to join more than 1,200 existing Fellows whose innovative research is advancing understanding of health and disease and is benefitting society.

Today's announcement (9 May 2018) recognises Professor Dominic Kwiatkowski’s pioneering work on malaria, and particularly the use of genomic epidemiology to understand the evolutionary arms race that is going on between human, parasite and mosquito populations in Africa and other tropical regions of the world.

A new machine learning tool that can detect whether emerging strains of the bacterium, Salmonella are more likely to cause dangerous bloodstream infections rather than food poisoning has been developed. The tool, created by a scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and her collaborators at the University of Otago, New Zealand and the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research, a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Germany, greatly speeds up the process for identifying the genetic changes underlying new invasive types of Salmonella that are of public health concern

Scientists have discovered the first leukaemia protective gene that is specific to the male-only Y chromosome. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge found that this Y-chromosome gene protects against the development of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) and other cancers.

For the first time, scientists have revealed the essential genes for the most deadly human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of South Florida (USF) created new genomic techniques to analyse every gene in the parasite and determine which ones are indispensable.