Red Flour Beetle Genome Project

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

About the Project

The Tribolium castaneum genome sequence and its analysis has been published in Nature, two companion journal issues (IBMB and DGE) and numerous other publications listed below.

The red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) is a common pest that is also a genetic model for the Coleoptera.

The genome has been sequenced to 7-fold coverage using a whole genome shotgun approach and assembled using the HGSC's assembly engine, Atlas, with methods employed for the Drosophila pseudoobscura genome assembly. Approximately 90% of the genome sequence has been mapped to chromosomes in collaboration with Dick Beeman (USDA ARS) and Sue Brown (Kansas State University).

Funding for this project has been provided by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI U54 HG003273), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS Agreement No. 58-5430-3-338).

We at the BCM-HGSC would like to thank the many members of the Tribolium community whose hard work has made this a successful project.

Genomic Resources

Additional Resources

Special Publications

Nature: The genome of the model beetle and pest Tribolium castaneum