[HELICONIUS] Progress on genome

[Chris Jiggins]

Hi Everyone (apologies for cross-posting)

This is just an update on progress on the genome.  For those of you  
not at the recent meeting, we now have around 20x coverage of the H.  
melpomene melpomene genome (6.7Gb), and are working to improve the  
assembly. We had a call with Baylor last week and they have now  
obtained the first sequence for the 8kb paired-end library.  A further  
run from this library will be available in a few weeks.  A lane of  
Illumina sequence for the same strain is also in the pipeline.  Thus,  
we hope to have a new version of the genome assembly in about a month.

We also talked about the issue of publication.  There is a general  
agreement among everyone I have spoken to that we need to 'save' the  
juicy biological analyses that the genome sequence facilitates for the  
main genome paper.  This would include things like RAD mapping of  
novel wing patterning genes, genome-scale analysis of molecular  
evolution, RAD population genomics, QTL RAD tag mapping of other  
traits (these are just the projects that I know about).  This is not  
to say that such analyses have to be fully included in the headline  
genome paper, but rather that we would need to find a way to split up  
the results so that nuggets can go into the genome paper while the  
complete results are in a companion paper first authored by whoever  
did the work.

The downside is that some may have to wait on publication of data  
while the main paper gets sorted - but the onus is on all of us to  
complete our contributions to the main paper and ensure that this isnt  
an issue.  The upside is that, I think if we take this approach we can  
be pretty confident of a high impact paper that we can all be proud of.

I am hoping that we can all agree to this now, to avoid any conflicts  
of interest down the line.

If there is anyone out there who is currently not part of the  
consortium, but  who would like to use the genome data then please let  
me know.  We are open to anybody working on the data provided it  
doesnt overlap with projects underway in the labs of those who have  
contributed money!

All the best

Chris

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Chris Jiggins
Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Tel: (+44)(0)1223 769021
http://www.heliconius.org/
http://heliconius.zoo.cam.ac.uk/

Fellow of St John's College,
Cambridge, UK. CB2 1TP
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