Fighting the Hidden Resistance

The nematode parasites Cyathostominae, also known as small strongyles, cost the agricultural industry lots of money and grief each year due to the many consequences they cause. The economic burden of these parasites is forecasted to increase, since these worms are rapidly gaining resistance to most drugs used to combat them. There are currently no easy methods for the diagnosis of these small strongyles. Our vision has been to apply synthetic biology to the untouched field of veterinary diagnostics by developing a better tool for detection, thus decreasing the growth of resistance among small strongyles. While working toward the goal of creating a reprogrammed smart bacteria (nicknamed the Worm Buster) to detect and report the presence of small strongyles, we discovered new useful applications of existing techniques along the way. This has brought our vision about the Worm Buster closer to being achievable, which in the future will provide the tools necessary to help farmers make a decision whether to treat their animals or not.

Our work has laid the foundation for our idea to someday potentially come to fruition. Our novel applications of cutting edge techniques such as phage display and transcriptomics using Oxford Nanopore MinION third generation sequencing provide groundwork for further expansions in the field of veterinary diagnostics.

The Targets

Small Strongyles or Cyathostominae are among the most common equine parasites, with more than 52 species in their family [1]. The infectious stage of small strongyles is when they’ve developed into larvae while still lurking in the grass. While horses graze, they consume the worms and the small strongyles continue to develop in the horses’ intestines, forming cysts in the intestinal wall [2]. When further evolved, these small strongyles can burst out from their cysts during late winter or early spring, moving up towards the intestinal lumen where they become adult worms [2, 8].

Figure 1. Small strongyles.