The Disease

T. congolense is a major livestock pathogen in Africa. Despite the severe disease it causes, T. congolense remains largely unstudied. A genome sequence for this organism could greatly enhance our ability to derive therapeutic treatments for animal trypanosomiasis. It will also improve our understanding of other African trypanosomes, including the Human pathogen T. brucei, of which T. congolense is the closest relative. A comparison of the two species will identify those genomic changes that are specific to T. brucei and potentially instrumental in causing disease in Humans.

The Genome

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute's Pathogen Genomics group has carried out a partial genome shotgun of T. congolense strain IL3000, producing a high-quality draft genome sequence with sequence coverage of 5x. The genome comprises 34,751,073bp, arranged into 11 pseudochromosomes, based on the T. brucei karyotype. The genome sequence contains 13496 predicted genes.

Telomeric sequences

Four telomeres and their upstream regions were selected from a large-insert BAC library and sequenced using a whole shotgun approach. In addition, two unassembled contigs contained a conserved telomeric repeat. These sequences can be accessed through our ftp site.

The Cell-surface Phylome

Phylogenetic analyses of all gene families encoding proteins with predicted cell-surface roles in T. congolense have been carried out in comparison with T. vivax and T. brucei. This has identified six such gene families unique in T. congolense, as well as many significant changes to families shared in all three species. These data can be accessed through GeneDB.

The Database

GeneDB has been funded by Wellcome Trust to provide full curation support for kinetoplastida genomes to meet the needs of the community. New annotations are constantly being added to keep up with published manuscripts and feedback from the Trypanosomatid research community. In collaboration with GeneDB, the EuPathDB genomic sequence data and annotations are regularly deposited on TriTrypDB where they can be integrated with other datasets and queried using customized queries.

Data Release

A manuscript has been prepared describing the genome of T. congolense IL3000 and this will be published shortly. The genome sequence is available for use without restriction. However, the annotation is pro-actively updated and curated. If you find the this resource helpful in your research, acknowledging the project in your publications will help insure its longevity.