Devaney, Britton, Matthews, Mable

Project website: BUG consortium
BBSRC: Award details

Parasitic worms infect all species of farm animal (cattle, sheep, goats and pigs) and need to be treated for the health and welfare of the animal. Many of these parasites are nematodes (or roundworms) and these are controlled using drugs called anthelmintics. Unfortunately many worm species are now resistant to these drugs, analogous to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, making control much more difficult. How anthelmintic resistance arises and spreads within the worms on a farm remains unclear.

What is the BUG Consortium? BUG stands for Building Upon the Genome. The BUG Consortium aims to use the recently published genome of the parasitic worm Haemonchus contortus (see Laing et al, 2013, Schwarz et al, 2013) to identify the genetic changes that allow worms to survive drug treatment.

The major of aims of the BUG Consortium are:

(i) to develop genetic markers to diagnose anthelmintic resistance at an earlier stage than current tests allow and
(ii) to use the genome as a tool for vaccine discovery.

People

The BUG Consortium brings together a unique group of scientists working at Universities and Institutes throughout the UK. It includes individuals with strong backgrounds in anthelmintic resistance, nematode genomics, population genetics, genome sequencing, mathematical modelling, climate change and agricultural economics. The BUG Consortium is led by Professor Eileen Devaney at the University of Glasgow, who has many years of
experience of working with parasitic nematodes.

Additional staff from the Institute of Biodiversity and Comparative Animal Health, University of Glasgow are:

, whose work adopts a comparative genomics using both C. elegans and parasitic nematodes, including H. contortus.

, a post-doctoral scientist and veterinary graduate, who has a long-standing research interest in anthelmintic resistance.

Dr Barbara Mable, an evolutionary geneticist, with a particular interest in how genomic and genetic changes affect interactions between organisms.

Dr Louise Matthews, a mathematical epidemiologist who works on a range of host-pathogen systems including E. coli, foot and mouth disease and nematodes.

Consortium members at other Institutions include Professor Neil Sargison, University of Edinburgh, a veterinary surgeon whose work has had a long-standing focus on planned worm control in sheep and cattle. He was responsible for the first report of macrocyclic lactone resistance in Teladorsagia circumcincta in the northern hemisphere in a commercial sheep flock.

At the Moredun Research Institute, Dr David Bartley brings expertise in assessing drug resistance in field populations of various parasitic nematodes.

Professor Alistair Stott at Scotland’s Rural College is an agricultural economist with an interest in the relationship between decision-making by the farmer and disease prevention and control.

Dr Eric Morgan, at the University of Bristol brings expertise in the effects of climate and climate change on parasite infection in ruminants, largely through the development, validation and application of predictive computer models.

At the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Dr James Cotton and Dr Matthew Berrimansequenced the H. contortus genome in collaboration with Professor John Gilleard (see below).

Collaborators include Professor John Gilleard at the University of Calgary, Canada, who is an expert in parasite genomics and anthelmintic resistance, Professor Mike Stear and Dr Richard Reeves at the University of Glasgow.

First published: 12 September 2014

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