BACK TO CONTENTS   |    PDF   |    PREVIOUS   |    NEXT

Title

 

 

 

 

 

Dung beetle database: comparison with other invertebrate transcriptomes

 

Authors

 

 Lucky M Khanyile1, Rodney Hull1 and Monde Ntwasa1, *

 

Affiliation

 

1Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Gatehouse 512, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits - 2050, South Africa.

 

Email

 

 monde.ntwasa@wits.ac.za

 

Article Type

 

Database

Date

 

received November 12, 2008; accepted December 01, 2008; published December 06, 2008

Abstract

The dung beetle E. intermedius, a member of the highly diverse order, Coleoptera has immense economic benefits. It was estimated that insect ecological services in the United States amounted to some $60 billion in 2006 with dung beetles being major contributors. E. intermedius may be endowed with a robust immune system given its microbe-rich habitat. Dung beetles live on juice and microbes from the dung and are therefore, potential models for the study of infectious agents and ecological damage. The E. intermedius database is a web-based system for the genome and transcriptome of the dung beetle. The database will be expanded to include differentially expressed genes in response o various stresses especially infectious agents such as fungi, bacteria and viruses.

 

Keywords

 E. intermedius; coleopteran; insect immunity; invertebrate transcriptomes; database

 

Citation

 

 Khanyile et al., Bioinformation 3(4): 159-161 (2008)

 

Edited by

 

P. Kangueane

 

ISSN

 

0973-2063

 

Publisher

 

Biomedical Informatics

License

 

 

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.