Figure 2

Deposition of new Schistosoma EST structural information into public databases has dramatically increased the amount, diversity and coverage of both S. mansoni and S. japonicum genomes. Although the efforts of the Schistosoma Genome Network [3] led to an annual increase in the amount of non-redundant transcriptome information for both S. mansoni and S. japonicum, it was not until the EST sequencing projects of Hu et al. [4] and Verjovski-Almeida et al. [5] that a near-complete description of each parasite's genomic complement was obtained. Together, this transcriptome information will lead to exponential advances in the understanding of parasitic helminths and will provide vital structural components to be used in post-genomic research activities (see Table 1).