Worm Breeder's Gazette 15(4): 13 (October 1, 1998)

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: Almost completed

The C. elegans Genome Sequencing Consortium

The Sanger Centre, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge, UK and the Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.

Over 85 megabases of C. elegans genomic DNA has now been finished,
whilst over 98% of the physical map sequence is either finished or
represented by preliminary contig assemblies.  The breakdown for the C.
elegans chromosomes is as follows:-

I=11.9     II=13.6     III=10.3     IV=13.1     V=18.6     X=17.4

                In the available sequence data 18,394 protein coding
genes have been predicted of which 159 currently have been shown to
possess splice variants. 40% of the predicted genes are
transcriptionally confirmed from EST data.
                Seven of the eleven telomeric clones isolated by Wicky
et al (Proc.Nat.Acad.Sci.USA (1996) 93:8983-8988) have either direct
sequence linkage to the sequence map or confirmed linkage through PCR
products of 4.5 to 11kb. These are LGIR:cTel29B; LGIIL:cTel52S;
LGIIIL:cTel54X; LGIVL:cTel4X; LGIVR:cTel79B; LGVL:cTel3X; LGXR:cTel55X.
                Any corrections to gene predictions or any information
which will improve the annotation for sequence data is greatly
appreciated and should be directed to Steve Jones (sjj@sanger.ac.uk) or
John Spieth (jspieth@watson.wustl.edu).

                All finished sequences are available after completion
and unfinished sequences are available after completion of the initial
shotgun phase. Sequences are available by anonymous ftp and the WWW. The
latter offers on-line search facilities:-

Sanger Center, UK 				 
ftp: ftp.sanger.ac.uk			
directory: pub/databases/C.elegans_sequences	 
WWW: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans	  

Genome Sequencing Center
ftp: genome.wustl.edu
directory: pub/gsc1/sequence/st.louis/elegans/
WWW: http://genome.wustl.edu/gsc/

The entire set of predicted proteins, including those from alternatively
spliced transcripts, are available as the database WormPep, see
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/wormpep.
Preliminary sequences for entire chromosomes are now available. These
sequences are available via
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/chromosomes.shtml.
Data from the C. elegans genome project is available as an ACEDB
database.  For information regarding the C. elegans ACEDB database
contact Richard Durbin(rd@sanger.ac.uk) or see
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/acedb.shtml.


        ACEDB data releases can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from:-		
                USA:	ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in repository/acedb 
                UK:	ftp.sanger.ac.uk in pub/acedb	
                France:	lirmm.lirmm.fr in genome/acedb

A version of the C. elegans acedb database is now available on-line. 
This database is updated weekly.
See http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/webace_front_end.shtml.
This weekly updated database can also be accessed using the xaceclient,
see http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/xaceclient_howto.shtml.