Mapping and sequencing of P. pacificus mutants

It is relatively easy to sequence a genome. However, understanding the function and biological significance of individual genes, still takes an enormous amount of experimental work. One major part of our work is to contribute to the identification of links between genotype and phenotype. We work on identifying the genetic basis for various traits. This involves the analysis of whole-genome sequenced mutant strains, as well as statistical analyses of the association between genotype and phenotype based on artificial crosses and population-scale resequencing data. While all three approaches start with a phenotypic observation first (forward genetics), the establishment of an efficient way to knock out genes in P. pacificus allows us to apply reverse genetic approaches to test if the candidate genes that were identified based on knowledge from C. elegans, can also control a given phenotype in P. pacificus .