Whole-genome sequence of a female Loa loa adult worm from Cameroon

Although loiasis affects more than 20 million people and that its associated clinical complications can cause multiple organ failures, this disease remains understudied. Consequently, the elimination of loiasis is not on the agenda of public health services. Defining an effective strategy to tackle this disease is challenging and requires a better understanding of the parasite's biology, including its genetic aspects. Loa loa adult worms provide large amounts of biological tissues for genetic sequencing, but are very difficult to collect. Therefore, limited genomic data are available for this parasite. This study aimed to produce a more complete genome assembly of L. loa worm, which can be used for future research on genetic diversity, population dynamics and immunological processes.

A 91.2 Mb genome assembly (150 contigs, N50 = 1.14 Mb, GC content = 30.67%) was generated from a single adult female L. loa worm, sequenced on a PromethION flow cell to a read depth of 147×. Alignment of this assembly with the available Loa reference genome displayed 96.08% identity. BUSCO analysis showed a 98.0% completeness of universally conserved nematode genes. The whole-genome assembly reported in this study were deposited in NCBI under the accession number JBSOQI010000000.