Blastocystis hominis

Blastocystis hominis, the only Stramenophile which is potentially pathogenic for humans, has a genome of 10 Mb, in which very few genes have been identified to date.

The DNA will be provided by the UMR ENVL-INRA 598, and will be extracted from the karyotypic bands by the Clermont group, and utilized for the construction of 2 plasmid libraries (3 kb inserts in the multicopy vector pcdna2.1 and 10 kb inserts in the low copy number vector pCNS), and a miniBAC library (25-30 kb inserts in the pBBC vector). Sequencing will be performed by Genoscope (about 180,000 reads).

Assembly and annotation will be carried out by the Clermont group. Post-genomic exploitation of the data will be oriented towards metabolic adaptations and evolution of an anaerobic eukaryote, and a search for virulence and zoonotic transfer factors.

Contacts:
Patrick Wincker (Genoscope) - Christian Vivares (Université de Clermont-Ferrand)