Prof. Tim Anderson, Dr. Frédéric Chevalier, and Dr. Winka Le Clec'h visited their collaborator, Dr. Eric Ndombi, and his team at KEMRI for a ten-day workshop.
They taught the Kenyan team how to prepare amplicon libraries from pools of miracidia for next-generation sequencing. The goal is to sequence key exons from SmTRPM.PZQ and SmSULT-OR, which are involved in the PZQ and OXA response in schistosome worms, respectively. This will help investigate their genetic diversity and better understand the persistence of hotspot areas where people remain heavily infected with schistosome parasites despite repeated PZQ treatment.
During this field trip, they also learned how to catch snails in the field for microbiome sampling on FTA cards.
More photos from this field trip are available in the Gallery!