Identification, analysis, and linkage mapping of expressed sequence tags from the Australian sheep blowfly

Siu F. Lee*, Zhenzhong Chen, Annette McGrath, Robert T. Good, Philip Batterham

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)
49 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background: The Australian sheep blowfly Lucilia cuprina (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) is a destructive pest of the sheep, a model organism for insecticide resistance research, and a valuable tool for medical and forensic professionals. However, genomic information on L. cuprina is still sparse.Results: We report here the construction of an embryonic and 2 larval cDNA libraries for L. cuprina. A total of 29,816 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were obtained and assembled into 7,464 unique clusters. The sequence collection captures a great diversity of genes, including those related to insecticide resistance (e.g., 12 cytochrome P450s, 2 glutathione S transferases, and 6 esterases). Compared to Drosophila melanogaster, codon preference is different in 13 of the 18 amino acids encoded by redundant codons, reflecting the lower overall GC content in L. cuprina. In addition, we demonstrated that the ESTs could be converted into informative gene markers by capitalizing on the known gene structures in the model organism D. melanogaster. We successfully assigned 41 genes to their respective chromosomes in L. cuprina. The relative locations of these loci revealed high but incomplete chromosomal synteny between L. cuprina and D. melanogaster.Conclusions: Our results represent the first major transcriptomic undertaking in L. cuprina. These new genetic resources could be useful for the blowfly and insect research community.

Original languageEnglish
Article number406
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalBMC Genomics
Volume12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Aug 2011
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2011. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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