Helminths can cause significant disease in their hosts; in animals, they are a major health concern and cause substantial economic losses in livestock industries, whereas, in humans, they are responsible for some of the most neglected of diseases despite infecting over a billion people worldwide. Steve’s lab uses a range of genomic approaches to investigate genome-wide genetic changes from single cells to globally distributed populations of parasites to understand fundamental parasite biology and evolutionary processes such as host adaptation and drug resistance. To support this work, the lab has generated, curated, and openly shared several high-quality genomes and resources for key helminth species to further parasitology research and its community.
Before joining the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Steve completed a PhD in Genetics in 2011 at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, before switching fields to work as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Warwick Grant on the genetics of drug response in the filarial parasite, Onchocerca volvulus. In 2015, Steve joined Sanger and the Parasite Genomics group led by Matt Berriman, where he improved genetic resources for the veterinary parasites Haemonchus contortus and Teladorsagia circumcincta and mapped genes and causal variants associated with resistance to the three major classes of drugs used to control helminths worldwide.
Steve was awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in 2020 to establish his group in the Parasites and Microbes programme. The team’s broad focus on the genetic and phenotypic variation of a range of helminth species and the globally relevant diseases they cause is shaped and enriched by multidisciplinary research by a diverse group of investigators and collaborators from around the world.
Collaborations:
- BUG Consortium
- STOP Consortium