Corn snake's genome sequenced to improve the large database of the species including reptiles

Genomics helps scientists better investigate the evolution of the living world. Now, there are 5000 species of mammals found in the world, of which more than 100 have their genome sequenced. However, among 10000 species, there are only 9 species of reptiles are available to the scientific community. Therefore, a research team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has produced a large database of the species. Notably, the database includes the newly-sequenced genome of the corn snake, which is a species used to understand the evolution of reptiles these years. The team has successfully found the mutation which causes albinism in the species. The researches published their findings in Scientific Reports this week. How the snake lost its limbs and how various skin colorations have evolved previously remains to be studied on. Previously, the genomic databases lack for the reptiles' information. Now, Dr. Athanasia Tzika, who is a researcher in the Department of genetics and evolution of the UNIGE Faculty of Sciences, has built a database involving sequenced genomes from the major evolutionary lineages of reptiles. This Reptilian Transcriptomes Database 2.0 is aimed at producing the researchers a substantial portion of the missing data by sequencing all genes from several reptilian species. This database will be useful to those researchers all over the world who are working on the development and evolution of vertebrates and especially reptiles Since gene sequencing requires to determine the sequence of the full genome of the investigated animal, corresponding to two billions of nucleotides for the corn snake, it is a great project. Now this work has been completed in the team of Michel Milinkovitch, professor in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at UNIGE. It covers about 85 percent of the snake total genome size. They chose the corn snake as this species breeds easily, and it is oviparous and non-venomous. The corn snake's genome sequencing will make precise identification of other mutations responsible for multiple variations of snake skin coloration easier. Read more:http://www.cusabio.com/ELISA-Kit/Sheep-Interleukin-11IL-11-ELISA-KIT-1035330.html