Unravelling genotypic and phenotypic variation in helminth populations

Helminth infections affect over 1.5 billion people and countless animals globally, causing significant disease burdens such as pain, disability, developmental delays, and, in severe cases, death. Consequently, human helminth infections are the target of global mass drug delivery campaigns, and in veterinary settings, hundreds of millions of animals are persistently treated with anthelmintic drugs to prevent and cure infections. Helminths' incredible ability to survive and adapt lies in their capacity to generate and maintain significant genetic variation upon which selection can act, which in turn determines their adaptive potential. The genetic basis for this adaptive potential is, however, poorly understood. This major knowledge gap, largely due to the high genetic diversity and experimental intractability of most helminth species, limits our ability to understand these processes. Overcoming this challenge is crucial for successfully treating disease and predicting the outcomes of long-term control programmes.
In the first phase of my Future Leaders Fellowship, I used the sheep gastrointestinal parasite Haemonchus contortus as a genetically tractable, natural host-parasite system to understand the genetic mechanisms underpinning parasite adaption. In the next phase of my FLF, I will extend this work to focus on more complex, natural helminth populations that infect humans and animals around the world. This work seeks to better characterise genetic diversity in natural helminth populations, understand how parasites adapt to host and environmental change, and define drug treatment responses of parasites in the context of their natural, complex environment.
To address the new knowledge gaps posed above, I have three key aims:

To understand the strengths and weaknesses of using single genomes versus multi-genome assemblies to understand global variation in parasites.
To measure the species diversity of helminth populations and their response to drug treatment and...