| URL: | http://www.heliconius.org |
| Full name: | Genomic tools and cDNA derived markers for butterflies. |
| Description: | The Heliconius or passion-vine butterflies are tropical butterflies from the new world that show a huge diversity of wing patterns. They have undergone rapid speciation and divergence, and also show an amazing amount of convergence in wing pattern due to mimcry. Evolutionary biologists have studied these butterflies for over 150 years, and we now know a great deal about their ecology, systematics and evolution. This web site offers an introduction to their biology and current research projects studying different aspects of their genetics and evolution. We hope you like them as much as we do! |
| Year founded: | 2005 |
| Last update: | 2018 |
| Version: | |
| Accessibility: |
Accessible
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| Country/Region: | United Kingdom |
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| University/Institution: | University of Edinburgh |
| Address: | Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Ashworth Laboratories, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, University of Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, Edinburgh, UK. |
| City: | Edinburgh |
| Province/State: | |
| Country/Region: | United Kingdom |
| Contact name (PI/Team): | CHRIS D. JIGGINS |
| Contact email (PI/Helpdesk): | chris.jiggins@ed.ac.uk |
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Genomic tools and cDNA derived markers for butterflies. [PMID: 16029486]
The Lepidoptera have long been used as examples in the study of evolution, but some questions remain difficult to resolve due to a lack of molecular genetic data. However, as technology improves, genomic tools are becoming increasingly available to tackle unanswered evolutionary questions. Here we have used expressed sequence tags (ESTs) to develop genetic markers for two Müllerian mimic species, Heliconius melpomene and Heliconius erato. In total 1363 ESTs were generated, representing 330 gene objects in H. melpomene and 431 in H. erato. User-friendly bioinformatic tools were used to construct a nonredundant database of these putative genes (available at http://www.heliconius.org), and annotate them with blast similarity searches, InterPro matches and Gene Ontology terms. This database will be continually updated with EST sequences for the Papilionideae as they become publicly available, providing a tool for gene finding in the butterflies. Alignments of the Heliconius sequences with putative homologues derived from Bombyx mori or other public data sets were used to identify conserved PCR priming sites, and develop 55 markers that can be amplified from genomic DNA in both H. erato and H. melpomene. These markers will be used for comparative linkage mapping in Heliconius and will have applications in other phylogenetic and genomic studies in the Lepidoptera. |