The D. melanogaster genome is approximately 180 Mb in size, 120 Mb of which is euchromatic, and was sequenced as an early test of the applicability of whole-genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing technology for large eukaryotic genomes. More...
The D. melanogaster genome is approximately 180 Mb in size, 120 Mb of which is euchromatic, and was sequenced as an early test of the applicability of whole-genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing technology for large eukaryotic genomes. The genome is organized into two large and one small autosomes, an X chromosome, and a heterochromatic Y chromosome. The heterochromatin is mainly comprised of simple repeats, transposable elements, and tandem arrays of ribosomal RNA genes. A small number of genes have also been found within the heterochromatin.
The sequence of the D. melanogaster genome, originally determined in a collaboration between Celera and the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, is described in the March 24, 2000 issue of Science. Ongoing efforts at the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project and Drosophila Heterochromatin Genome Project have corrected and expanded the sequence (Celniker et al., 2002; Hoskins et al., 2002). In August 2007, Release 5.2 was made public, providing a unified assembly of the euchromatin and heterochromatin with only 8 gaps remaining in the euchromatic chromosome arm assemblies. A genome browser containing the release 5 assembly and annotation data is available at FlyBase.
Release 5 of the D. melanogaster genomic sequence is available for download from GenBank, and from the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project website along with the Release 5 notes.
The FlyBase Consortium provides a high quality annotation of the D. melanogaster genome (Misra et al., 2002). FlyBase curators manually review available genomic, transcript, and protein sequence data to generate gene models based on traceable support evidence. Annotation includes protein coding genes, pseudogenes, and non-coding RNA genes. The annotation provided by FlyBase is available at the FlyBase web site, in sequence updates submitted to the archival databases (DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank), in the NCBI RefSeq records, and in the NCBI Map Viewer genome browser.
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