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.