lpetrich

It is a pleasant surprise how far gene sequencing has advanced; not only the human genome, but some other big genomes, are very close to done. Here are some more genomes in the works:

The domestic honeybee Apis mellifera, with plans to do some comparison sequencing of Africanized "killer bees". Such comparisons may reveal what genetic difference makes "killer bees" relatively itchy.

The filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans and the red bread mold Neurospora crassa, both common model systems. I wonder if anyone has tried to find out what mechanisms make these fungi grow in filamentous fashion -- this is an uncomplicated shape, and these fungi ought to be easy to perform the appropriate experiments on.

The one-celled flagellate green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Another common model system, it will be the first photosynthetic protist sequenced. It's relatively distant from land plants.

A diatom, Thalassiosira pseudonana will be the next photosynthetic protist. It is in the Chromista, a group with includes golden and brown algae and various nonphotosynthetic organisms like oomycetes. This grouping has come from molecular comparisons; previously, the Oomycetes had been classified among the Fungi.

Poplar trees (Populus) will be sequenced to 3X, which is less than the 6X or 9X sequencing that one often sees. But poplar trees have only 550 million base pairs in their genomes, making it easier to search for genes.

Lots of land-plant chloroplasts are being sequenced with the hope of further untangling plant evolution. The proposal linked to mentions no less than 15 proposed family trees for the 5 main seed-plant groups:

Cycads
Conifers
Ginkgo
Gnetales (Gnetum, Ephedra, Welwitschia)
Angiosperms

Some of these hypotheses include a close gnetales-conifer grouping, which has been named the "gne-pine" hypothesis.

pz

Don't forget Danio rerio!

The Sanger Institute
Stanford
The ZFIN database

Wounded King

Dont forget the little froggies .

Celsus

Actually, today it was announced that our own sequence might as well be finished!

Wounded King

How many omics are there now anyway?

Genomics
Proteomics
Transcriptomics
Metabolomics

anyone think of anymore, preferably related to molecular biology?

pz

Interactomics: the set of physical interactions within and between all DNA and RNA segments, and all proteins.

Phenomics: the description of all phenotypes produced by combinatorial inactivation of the each gene in the genome.

There are a lot of bandwagons being ridden under the omic umbrella, I think.

Valentine Pontifex

And the answer is 42.



{To steal someone else's joke.}

lpetrich

There's a big article on this subject over at NHGRI.

Also check out this article on comparative genomics; it mentions that ~60% of human genes are shared with fruit flies (not far behind ~75% with bony fish).

Boro Nut

I'm getting a bit sick of this. First it's Eye-Rack instead of Iraq, now it's Genome. The Gee is silent you idiot. You don't say Effairies do you?

Boro Nut

ps418

The Chimpanzee Genome Project is underway also, though its not even close to being complete.

Patrick