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Comparative Genomic Analysis of Euchromatic and Heterochromatic Chromosomal regions of two species of Drosophila
Author(s) -
Jager Gavin,
Saville Ken
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.877.21
Subject(s) - euchromatin , heterochromatin , genetics , biology , drosophila (subgenus) , evolutionary biology , chromosome , gene
Comparative genomic analyses can yield important information about the structure and function of genomes. The public availability of DNA sequence data from genome sequencing projects provides opportunities for undergraduate and high school students to do genomics research. The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP, see www.gep.wustl.edu ) is a scientific and educational collaboration centered at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), which provides a variety of tools for comparative genome analysis of several Drosophila species. The goal of the current GEP project is to compare sequences of chromosome four (also called the ‘dot' chromosome) from D. melanogaster with homologous regions from other species. The dot chromosome has interesting features of heterochromatin and euchromatin, and is therefore a good choice for studying the evolution of these two types of sequences. Here we describe the analysis of a euchromatic region from D. biarmipes that is homologous to chromosome 3L of D. melanogaster. This analysis serves as an important control comparison in our larger project. We analyzed 40,000 base pairs of DNA from contig 6 of the D. biarmipes genome. Initial analysis suggested there are nine predicted genes in this region. We used several analysis tools available from the GEP and other sources to generate precise gene models for these genes. Our results will contribute to the completion of the full genomic map of D. biarmipes and will be compiled along with other student data to analyze the evolution of the structure and function of heterochromatin as compared to euchromatin. *The Genomics Education Partnership is funded by HHMI (Professors grant #52007051 to SCR Elgin) and by Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL).