No need to rush. I suggested Marmorkrebs for sequencing before I started writing this post.
This should be no surprise, given that a crayfish genome is something I’ve been asking for for years. Indeed, every time someone mentions how bored they are with yet another genome being sequenced, or how hard it is for the poor genome researchers who are drowning in so much data, it’s become a running joke for me to say, “Yeah, yeah... So where’s my frickin’ crayfish genome‽”
As of this writing, four decapod species are in the draft list. The Lousisiana red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, is on the draft list of species. This is a good choice, as we know more about its biology than probably any other crayfish.
I hope this pans out.
Related posts
Olivia’s fantasy genomes
Genome research: Good idea, bad idea
The first crustacean genome
Hat tip to Ed Yong and Alex Wild.
1 comment:
I hope this pans out. I had seen the i5K project discussed the other day, but it was described as 5000 INSECT species in that reference. This makes a lot more sense, and hopefully a broad Arthropod distribution is what they actually are aiming for. I think a crayfish would be a great thing, because we have a Daphnia genome, and we have large EST libraries for crabs, lobsters, and shrimp (~30000 sequences in GenBank), but no large crayfish libraries (only 844 sequences for Astacoidea). Any expansion of the Decapod sequences in the database will be vastly useful. Greater representation from Astacoidea will be really a useful addition as well. Based on the wiki, it looks like having an EST library or other sequence information would help with getting interest in a full genome project. Certainly increasing the crayfish EST information available will help us get there. Hopefully, I'll be working on that!
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