Setting the foundation for helminths systems biology

Abstract

Next generation sequencing technologies and bioinformatics have provided cost-effective methods to obtain and analyze large amounts of genome and transcriptome data from many different organisms. This information has to be integrated in order to have a system-level understanding of any organism. Parasites, in particular helminths, present new challenges not only for systems biology but for many other disciplines in science because of their diversity and evolution. Helminths are adapted to a diverse set of niches and very little is known about how they interact and manipulate their hosts or how they sense and interpret the environment. In this review, different sequencing technologies are described and it is also discussed how to avoid possible biases in each of them. The technological advances in different ’omics approaches and bioinformatics allow us to study helminths in more detail in order to contribute to current knowledge of parasitology and underpin future explorations.