Premier Presentation: The 1KITE initiative: Past, present and future

We discuss the formation of the 1000 insect transcriptome initiative. By necessity, the project was split into three phases, the first of which, involving the analysis of 1478 genes from 144 taxa from across Hexapoda, has been published. We discuss our phylogenetic results from this paper. Simultaneously, we have been working on 10 taxonomic divisions, or subprojects, which include basal hexapods, Odonata, Polyneoptera, Dictyoptera, Paraneoptera, Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Neuropterida, Diptera, Trichoptera, and Lepidoptera. These subprojects include data from 1500 taxa, and 3500-4900 genes. Progress on the subprojects will be discussed. There are also a large number of collaborative spin-off projects. Finally, we plan to summarize our data in a single publication, as well as a book. Because of the size of these data, we have modified protocols for virtually every step in the analytical pipeline, and these modifications will be discussed.