Just saw a news article about this on the USDA’s ARS website, and I thought you guys might be interested. You can nominate arthropods that you’d like to have sequenced. Mites, thrips, springtails, gnats, you name it!
Quote:
The i5k initiative has a broad and inclusive mandate. We provide guidelines for genome projects, hold webinars, and maintain an up-to-date list of sequenced arthropod genomes.
Our goals are to:
- Organize the sequencing and analysis of the genomes of 5,000 arthropod species.
- Provide guidelines and best practices for arthropod genome projects and their data management.
- Help exisiting and new arthropod genome projects to find the most appropriate repository for their needs.
- Grow a community around arthropod genomes that works towards improved sequencing, assembly, annotation, and data management standards.
We encourage both collaborative and individual initiatives, avoiding at all cost the displacement of well-thought plans from individuals and institutions. In this spirit, i5K joined forces with 1KITE, the 1000 Insect Transcriptome Evolution project, which aims to study the transcriptomes of 1,000 insect species encompassing all recognized insect orders.