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Title
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Dung beetle database: comparison with other invertebrate transcriptomes
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Authors
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Lucky M Khanyile1, Rodney Hull1 and Monde Ntwasa1, *
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Affiliation
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1Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Gatehouse 512, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits - 2050, South Africa.
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monde.ntwasa@wits.ac.za
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Article Type
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Database | |
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Date
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received November 12, 2008; accepted December 01, 2008; published December 06, 2008 | |
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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.
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Keywords |
E. intermedius; coleopteran; insect immunity; invertebrate transcriptomes; database
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Citation
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Khanyile et al., Bioinformation 3(4): 159-161 (2008)
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Edited by
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P. Kangueane
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ISSN
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0973-2063
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Publisher
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Biomedical Informatics | |
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License
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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. |