De Novo Assembly of the Trypanosoma congolense Genome Reveals an Organization Influenced by Antigenic Variation but Distinct from Trypanosoma brucei
Marija Krasiļņikova, Jane C Munday, Dario Beraldi, Stephen D Larcombe, Guy R Oldrieve, Craig Lapsley, Liam J Morrison, Keith R Matthews, Richard McCulloch · 2026
Read De Novo Assembly of the Trypanosoma congolense Genome Reveals an Organization Influenced by Antigenic Variation but Distinct from Trypanosoma brucei by Marija Krasiļņikova, Jane C Munday, Dario Beraldi, Stephen D Larcombe, Guy R Oldrieve, Craig Lapsley, Liam J Morrison, Keith R Matthews, Richard McCulloch (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13547854.txt.
Description
Marija Krasiļņikova and eight co-authors assemble the full genome of Trypanosoma congolense in this 2026 paper. It evades the immune system by swapping its surface coat, a trick called antigenic variation. The coat proteins are VSGs, and their genes form a large archive. A broken genome assembly had blocked study of how the archive is used. The team combined long read sequencing with Hi-C contact mapping to build a telomere to telomere assembly.
The genome holds twelve paired chromosomes, one with four copies, and over a hundred small ones. About fifteen hundred VSG genes sit mostly in subtelomeres, in smaller loci than its cousin species uses. One chromosome carries about forty percent of the archive and stays largely silent, a likely reservoir of fresh variants. The authors offer the assembly as a platform for studying this parasite's unusual switching system.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Marija Krasiļņikova, Jane C Munday, Dario Beraldi, Stephen D Larcombe, Guy R Oldrieve, Craig Lapsley, Liam J Morrison, Keith R Matthews, Richard McCulloch |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |