Danio Species Sequencing Project - Danio albolineatus

The Zebrafish (Danio rerio) genome is essentially finished. There are many other members of the Danio genus that are closely related, Danio rerio (zebrafish) has distinctive stripes of black melanophores and silver xanthrophores, whereas Danio albolineatus has almost uniformly dispersed melanophores, xanthopores, iridophores and erythrophores. This is an excellent model to study the differentiation of neural crest stem cells into different pigment cell types, and the patterning of these pigment cells into large structures - stripes and spots. In addition to working towards a better understanding of neural crest stem cells and skin patterning one can also use the genome sequence comparatively to identify conserved sequences, and those evolving at a faster rate. Due to the high level of polymorphism between Danio albolineatus and the Danio rerio reference genome, mapping of reads as a resequencing project (expecting ~1% polymorphism or 2-3 SNP maximum) is likely to perform poorly.