Hirudo medicinalis isolate:777 Genome sequencing and assembly

Medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) have been used in medicine for thousands of years to treat a wide range of ailments. Leeches are vast natural pharmacopoeias selected by evolution. Moreover, along with other model organisms employed in the life-sciences (fruit fly, mouse, rat) the medicinal leech might be considered as one of the best studied animals in terms of its morphology, physiology and biochemistry. But little has been done at the genomic and transcriptomic levels yet. The goal of this project is to produce, annotate, and analyze a high-quality genomic sequence for the leech Hirudo medicinalis.