Annotating the Insect Regulatory Genome

摘要

Insects comprise the largest and most diverse class of animals on earth, and have major impacts on human health and agriculture. The effort to better understand insect biology has led to the sequencing of hundreds of insect genomes. However, the usefulness of having a genome sequence is limited in the absence of a comprehensive annotation—a description of the function of each part of the sequence. Functional parts of the genome include not only genes, but also regulatory sequences that mediate gene expression. We discuss here methods used to identify regulatory sequences within the genome, with the emphasis on a pair of tools we have developed, REDfly and SCRMshaw, that can be used in tandem to carry out this task in an efficient and economical manner.