Caenorhabditis japonica

The Caenorhabditis japonica genome sequencing project at the Washington University School of Medicine is part of the roundworm comparative genomics project that will add three more species (C. japonica, C. remanei and C. sp. CB5161) to the two species (C. elegans and C. briggsae) that are already in public database. C. japonica is an outgroup, the closest known, to the other Caenorhabditis species. This is of particular importance in studying evolutionary variations in behaviour, ecology and gene composition, and should contribute to a better understanding of genome structure and function. A combination of large insert clone mapping and whole genome shotgun (WGS) assembly was used as sequencing strategy. The C. japonica genome was sequenced to a depth of 6.3X, where the expected genome size is 83 Mb. The DNA was extracted from a mixed population of females and males from different developmental stages.