The Tribolium genome sequence: Offshoots and enhancements

The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, remains the only representative of the most speciose animal order with a fully sequenced genome, although the output of transcriptome data for other beetle species is expanding, and additional beetle genomes will soon follow. BeetleBase (http://beetlebase.org/) is the central repository for information on Tribolium genetics and genomics. The current version incorporates approximately 90% of the 152 Mb genome sequence assembly into the ten chromosome maps. We are now attempting to raise this figure to 95% by mapping the 70 largest remaining sequence scaffolds with the aid of NimbleGen SeqCap microarrays designed for targeted enrichment of unmapped regions. Additional BeetleBase updates will include enhanced JBrowse capabilities to facilitate genome browsing, updated gene annotations supplemented with additional whole-genome tiling array data, as well as historical data from the Tribolium Information Bulletin dating back to 1958. We also plan to incorporate information about both the classical mutant strain collection and more recent collection of transposon insertional mutant strains. Another effort will involve more seamless interconnectivity between BeetleBase and related databases. To enhance the power of genomic analysis in Tribolium and to enable comparative genomic studies, we plan to undertake at least low-coverage sequencing of four additional Tribolium species, namely T. freemani, T. madens, T. confusum and T. brevicornis.