Brockhouse's Genomics Project Approved by NHGRI
The Simulium Genomics Project, spearheaded by Charles Brockhouse, Ph.D., of the Department of Biology at Creighton University had their Black Fly Genome white paper approved by the National Human Genome Research Institute.Black flies are the second most medically-important group of arthropod pest species affecting human health and are the most important group of disease vectors and pest species lacking a representative genome project. Simulium species are the sole vectors for the parasite Onchocerca volvulus, the causative agent of onchocerciasis, or river blindness. Onchocerca volvulus is transmitted by the female black flies biting humans and infects approximately 39 million people in Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Central and South America. Historically, it has been the second most important infectious cause of blindness (after trachoma) and the second most important disease in terms of overall socio-economic impact, eclipsed only by polio.
The blindness and skin disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus results in the loss of more than one million Disability Adjusted Life Years annually. Affected persons spend an additional 15% of their annual income on health, children are more likely to drop out of school and farmers have about 30% less land under cultivation, directly contributing to the poverty of these regions.
Until recently, it was felt that river blindness could not be eliminated using the current available tools, which rely primarily upon mass distribution of the drug Ivermectin. However, recent studies have suggested that long-term treatment with Ivermectin has dramatic effects on fertility of the adult female parasites. This finding has resulted in a paradigm shift in the field of river blindness control, moving from a focus on control in Africa towards elimination. The strategy to eliminate it involved delineating isolated foci of the infection, and eliminating the infection sequentially in these foci, eventually resulting in continent wide elimination of the parasite.
For this strategy to be successful, it is first necessary to delineate these isolated foci or transmission zones. Genome sequencing of the vectors for river blindness represented in Africa will shed light on the differentiation between populations and determining effective population sizes. The white paper proposes sequencing 11 Simulium genomes, including both disease vectors and non-vector species.
The approval of the white paper means that the sequencing will be funded by the National Institutes of Health and sequenced at one of three labs: The Human Genome Sequencing Center at Texas Medical Center, the Center for Genome Research at MIT’s Whitehead Institute or the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Simulium Genomics Project is organized by the Marine & Aquatic Genetics lab at Creighton University, the Center for Genomics and Biotechnology at Indiana University, the Department of Entomology at the London Natural History Museum, the Biodiversity of Medically Important Arthropods Laboratory at Clemson University, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana, and the Freshwater Ecology Laboratory at the University of South Alabama.
The preliminary data for the genome project was funded by a $10,000 grant from the Creighton University division of Academic Affairs Research Initiative. The development of the project was also funded by travel grants from the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and work by the Ferlic Summer Research Scholars.
Click here to read the white paper