The Seaver lab recently published a paper through an international collaboration in Genome Biology and Evolution. Research in the Seaver lab utilizes marine segmented worms to study how animals can regenerate and how animals are put together during embryogenesis. Availability of genomic resources greatly facilitate studies aimed to understand these processes at a molecular and mechanistic level.
While a genome sequence for the annelid Capitella teleta has been available since 2013 – it was the first polychaete worm to have a contig-level genome sequenced – this resource is substantially outdated. The new genome sequencing study reports a chromosome-level reference genome for C. teleta that was generated using Hi-C chromatin conformation capture and long-read nanopore sequencing. The study also reports bulk and single-cell RNA-seq, and ATAC-seq developmental time courses. The first mitochondrial genome of the lab strain of C. teleta is also reported, revealing that the mitochondrial genome is heavily rearranged and contrasts with the evolutionarily stable nuclear gene family repertoire.
The C. teleta genomic resources reported in this study are publicly available online through a website hosted by NIH (https://research.nhgri.nih.gov/capitella) to to facilitate the genomic study of this animal. The findings from this study provide a great resource for the research community and can promote new research opportunities in animal and genome evolution.
A link to the published paper can be found at: https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/18/3/evag041/8495731
Image: A chromosome-level genome assembly and updated annotation of the annelid Capitella teleta. Source