Laura Kamenetzky from CONICET Argentina presented at the Nanopore Community Meeting in Boston on “Consolidation of a long-read sequencing platform in southern South America.” They have established the first long-read sequencing platform in Argentina at a university. Since 2020, they have focused on several scientific questions. Kamenetzky spoke about their projects related to Dioctophyme renale nematodes. The team established a workflow to sequence and assemble the genome based on “genome skimming.” They sampled parasites from Argentina and Brazil using the new mitochondrial markers. They learned that wild and domestic hosts share parasite populations. The researchers also found unique features of nematode mitogenomes they could use for comparisons. The team was able to sequence and annotate mitochondrial genomes. They then used targeted sequencing to learn about the diversity of nematodes in dogs and humans.
