The tardigrade, or water bear, a model Ecdysozoan. Hypsibius dujardini

Hypsibius dujardini has been chosen for sequencing as part of the Ecdysozoan Sequencing Project. This project aims to understand the composition of the transcriptome and proteome at different evolutionary nodes within the Ecdysozoa and to ultimately reconstruct the genome of the ancestral Ecdysozoan. These data will improve the annotation and interpretation of the genomes of the Ecdysozoan genetic model systems, Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. In turn, this will improve our understanding of the evolution and function of genes that are found in other organisms, including humans. Finally, the data will help us understand macroevolutionary mechanisms, and will be particularly useful in investiating the evolution of development. The Hypsibius dujardini is thought to be 70 MB, and will be sequenced to 5X coverage with 100,000 paired end reads.