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

• Main Authors: Good Robert T, McGrath Annette, Chen Zhenzhong, Lee Siu F, Batterham Philip
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2011-08-01
• Series: BMC Genomics
• Online Access: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/12/406

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Australian sheep blowfly <it>Lucilia cuprina </it>(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 <it>L. cuprina </it>is still sparse.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report here the construction of an embryonic and 2 larval cDNA libraries for <it>L. cuprina</it>. 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 <it>Drosophila melanogaster</it>, codon preference is different in 13 of the 18 amino acids encoded by redundant codons, reflecting the lower overall GC content in <it>L. cuprina</it>. 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 <it>D. melanogaster</it>. We successfully assigned 41 genes to their respective chromosomes in <it>L. cuprina</it>. The relative locations of these loci revealed high but incomplete chromosomal synteny between <it>L. cuprina </it>and <it>D. melanogaster</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results represent the first major transcriptomic undertaking in <it>L. cuprina</it>. These new genetic resources could be useful for the blowfly and insect research community.</p>