Plant & Animal Genomes XIV Conference

January 14-18, 2006
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Genomic Resources For Nasonia Species: From Species-Specific Studies To Comparative Genomics.

Monica C. Munoz-Torres¹ , John Werren² , Christopher A. Saski¹ , Jeanne Romero-Severson³ , Barbara P. Blackmon¹ , Jeffrey P. Tomkins¹

¹  Clemson University Genomics Institute. Clemson, SC. 29634.

²  Department of Biology, University of Rochester. Rochester, NY. 14627-0211.

³  Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame, IN 46556

Parasitoid wasps have been subjects of genetic, ecological, evolutionary and developmental research for over 40 years. Nasonia is an excellent candidate for studies in genetics and genomics due to ease of insect rearing and small genome size. There are three closely related species in the genus, the cosmopolitan N. vitripennis, and the North American N. longicornis, and N. giraulti. The genome size of N. vitripennis is approximately 250 Mb (2X greater than Drosophila melanogaster); however, the recombination rate in Nasonia is approximately 4X greater than in D. melanogaster, resulting in an average recombination rate per kilobase approximately 2X greater (around 330 Kb/cm). This, the ease of generating molecular markers, and the availability of genomic resources will be valuable for comparative genomics and positional cloning in these species. We have now developed a BAC library for N. vitriprennis and are in the process of developing libraries for its two sibling species. Here we describe the BAC library for N. vitripennis, which contains 36,864 clones with an average insert size of 110.3 Kb -representing 12 genome equivalents- and empty-vector content of 1.3%. This library is being used in 1) comparative genomics studies with the genes of the insect antennapedia complex (ANT-C), shedding light on its organization in Hymenopterans, 2) studying the genetic basis of wing size differences among the three sibbling species, and 3) a preliminary survey of the N. vitripennis genome, by sequencing 1440 BAC-ends, among other studies. A website for the distribution of all results is available at www.genome.clemson.edu/projects/nasonia.