Worm Breeder's Gazette 13(3): 11 (June 1, 1994)

These abstracts should not be cited in bibliographies. Material contained herein should be treated as personal communication and should be cited as such only with the consent of the author.

The C. elegans genome sequencing project. A progress report.

The C. elegans Genome Consortium, Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA and Sanger Centre, Hinxton Hall, Cambridge, UK.

Figure 1

We present here another progress report for the C. elegans genome sequencing project. A detailed description of 2.181 Mb of finished, contiguous sequence near the center of chromosome III has recently been published (1). Homology data for several additional cosmids was presented in the last issue of the Gazette (2). Since January, we have made considerable progress on much of the remainder of chromosome III (Figure 1). Significant protein similarities (blastx score >80) for cosmids completely or nearly finished since the last report are presented in Table 1. For each genomic locus, the highest blastx score and a brief identifier are listed. Although the cosmids which contain database hits may not be completely sequenced, the Consortium will make preliminary sequence data available to the community with the caveat that it is preliminary and may still contain errors. Finished cosmid sequences are now available by anonymous ftp at:

ftp.sanger.ac.uk (directory: pub/C.elegans_sequences).

In addition to chromosome III, shotgun sequencing is well along on chromosome II. The St. Louis group is going left from cosmid C06A8 to cosmid W06A11 ,and the Cambridge group is going right from cosmid T05A6 to near the vmp-1 locus. Once the gene-rich regions of chromosome II have been sequenced, the Consortium will move to chromosome X. For information on homologies, please contact LaDeana Hillier (lhillier@watson.wustl.edu) or Richard Durbin (rd@sanger.ac.uk). For information on sequencing plans or estimated completion times, please contact Richard Wilson (rwilson@watson.wustl.edu) or Alan Coulson (alan@sanger.ac.uk). All requests for cosmid clones should be addressed to Alan Coulson.

Literature Cited:

1) R. Wilson et al. Nature 368, 32-38 (1994).

2) The CeGC. WBG 13,14-19 (Feb. 1994).