Schistosomes are parasitic flatworms that infect than 150 million people globally resulting in a chronic neglected tropical disease. The parasite is a complex pathogen, transmitted by aquatic snails, via free living larvae, to mammalian definitive hosts. Over a period of 5¬–7 weeks, the parasite migrates and develops, through the lungs and liver, before reaching blood vessels of the gut mesentery as fully developed, sexually reproducing, adult worms. The life cycle is marked by dramatic changes to the body plan of the parasite with discrete life stages composed of different tissues and anatomies. Enabled by genomic resources that we built and systematically improved, we and others are creating single-cell transcriptome atlases at key points in the life cycle. After defining the major cell types at each stage, a major goal is to understand the trajectories of developing cells and tissues, so we can temporally resolve key processes and regulators. In this presentation, I will discuss the challenges and recent progress in pooling insights across several heterogenous datasets. By uncovering key components of development, we hope to identify vulnerabilities that can ultimately be exploited in the development of new control strategies..
Bio-Sketch of speaker: Professor Matt Berriman, from the School of Infection and Immunity at the University of Glasgow, trained as parasitologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, before undertaking Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Rockefeller University in New York. He then moved to the Wellcome Sanger Institute for many years, where he led the parasite genomics group, producing and analysing the genomes of more than 30 important parasitic protozoa and helminths. Building upon reference genomes (including schistosomes, whipworm, tapeworms, threadworms), his team used large scale comparative genomics and transcriptomics approaches to identify genes associated with parasitism and created new resources for understanding major changes across parasite life cycles. His current research focuses on parasitic helminths, particularly schistosomes, employing large-scale single-cell sequencing approaches to create cellular ‘atlases’. His goal is to define major changes in the transcriptional architecture of schistosome at key points during their development, so that new biological vulnerabilities can be identified, as possible new points for intervention and parasite control.