International Aphid Genomic Consortium
Over the past years, several significant
advances have been made towards developing aphids as a model system
for evolutionary genetics and genomics.
The International Aphid Genomic
Consortium (link to http://www.princeton.edu/~dstern/AphidResLinks.htm)
was created in Paris (June 2003) in order to coordinate various efforts,
both to cut down on unnecessary redundancy and to enhance the likelihood
of future for large-scale projects.
The ultimate goal of this network
is to develop the aphid model system to the same level of molecular,
cell, and developmental biological understanding as other model insects
(mosquito, drosophila, Lepidoptera, bee…), but with the added advantage
of being able to more easily study the mechanisms of adaptation and
biotic interactions in the context of natural and agronomic environments.
It was decided to focus on one aphid species: the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon
pisum, the primary species used
in laboratory and genetic studies.
 Acyrthosiphon pisum |
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 Diuraphis noxia |
 Sitobion avenae |
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 Myzus persicae |
The main efforts performed
since 2003 concerned the production of Expressed Sequence Tags not
only from the pea aphid but also from Toxoptera
citricida , Myzus persicae and Aphis goosypii .
A steering committee wrote in 2004 a white
paper to propose the sequencing of the genome of the
pea aphid ( Acyrthosiphon
pisum ).
The
National Human Genome Research Institute pointed this
project in March 2005 as a priority and the first sequences of the
530 Mb genome of A. pisum are already available by the
(see Traces
Archives at the NCBI).
Sequences are produced by the Baylor
College of Medicine ( Houston, USA ).
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