A high-throughput sequencing assay to comprehensively detect and characterize unicellular eukaryotes and helminths from biological and environmental samples

Background Several of the most devastating human diseases are caused by eukaryotic parasites transmitted by arthropod vectors or through food and water contamination. These pathogens only represent a fraction of all unicellular eukaryotes and helminths that are present in the environment and many uncharacterized organisms might have subtle but pervasive effects on health, including by modifying the microbiome where they reside. Unfortunately, while we have modern molecular tools to characterize bacterial and, to a lesser extent, fungal communities, we lack suitable methods to comprehensively investigate and characterize most unicellular eukaryotes and helminths: the detection of these organisms often relies on microscopy that cannot differentiate related organisms, while molecular assays can only detect the pathogens specifically tested.