We just had a call with Baylor and now have an updated assembly of the genome, with 8kb mate pair libraries included. The N50 scaffold size is now 164kb (i.e. half the genome is in scaffolds of 164kb or larger), which is looking good. The contig size within those scaffolds is 17.8kb. We hope to freeze the assembly soon so we can all get on with analysis and databasing. We also have some Illumina sequence which will be included in the assembly (currently its all based …

The Second meeting of the Heliconius Genome Consortium from March 25-26th 2010 was an awe inspiring event, from the decadence of St. John’s College to the impressive data on candidate color pattern genes. However, the focus of the meeting was the Heliconius genome, and with data rolling in from all over, there was plenty to discuss. Chris Jiggins and St John’s College were fantastic hosts, and provided everything we needed to stay caffeinated and involved throughout the days.
Over the two days, Heliconius biologists, bioinformaticians, others from sequencing centers and …

The second meeting of the Heliconius Genome Consortium will be held on 25-26th March 2010 in St Johns College Cambridge.
Accommodation will be available from Weds 24th until Friday inclusive at no cost, thanks to support from St Johns College.  The meeting will be held in the Old Music Room in St Johns College. For a map of college, see here.
Draft schedule:
Thursday 25th March

Morning – Assembly of a reference genome. A brief description of the data collected so far and status of the current assembly. Discussion of priorities for …

We now have 11x coverage of the H. melpomene genome, all in 454 shotgun sequence reads.  A preliminary assembly gives average contig size of 2662bp, and N50 ContigSize of 8207bp.  So a bit of a way to go until we have a full assembly, but good progress.  If anyone out there is interested in having a look at the data with a mind to contributing to its assembly/annotation or for whatever purpose, please let me know.

We have just heard that the first data is now available from Baylor for the Heliconius melpomene genome project.  Three full runs of 454, giving approximately 4X coverage of the whole genome.  We will be aligning this against existing genome sequence to assess coverage and quality as soon as we can get hold of it!

This is an article I wrote for the Research Horizons magazine in Cambridge. I thought it might be interesting as a bit of a review of some of the areas of research underway at the moment among members of the consortium.  It was written for a Darwin special issue – hence the quote at the start.
On the wings of a butterfly
Since Darwin’s time, Amazonian butterflies have fascinated evolutionary biologists as examples of evolution in action.
On reading Henry Walter Bates’ 1862 account of his travels in the Amazon, Charles Darwin …

The Heliconius Genome Consortium has been awarded a BBSRC ‘USA Partnering Award’ worth almost £40k over four years. This will fund meetings to bring the consortium members together for genome annotation and analysis. In addition a number of lab exchange visits for postdocs and students will also be funded. The aim is to promote collaboration and interaction between consortium members – and in particular between the UK and US. We are also keen to collaborate with other labs working on insect genomes who may be interested …

January 8-10, 2009 * Harvard University
Outline
1. Genome Sequencing Strategy & Details
2. Bioinformatics, Databasing, & Tool building
3. Major Tasks & Working Groups
Summary by Jamie Walters, Sean Mullen, Chris Jiggins and Owen McMillan
Genome Sequencing Effort:
This community project has arisen through the collaboration and ‘federation’ of several labs each promising to contribute $15,000 towards a “Heliconius Genome Project”. The sequencing will be done in collaboration with the Baylor Genome Center.
Contributing members include (alphabetically):
ffrench-Constant, Kronforst, Jiggins, Joron, Mallet, Mavarez, McMillan, Mullen, Reed
Those who attended the meeting:
Stephen Richards (via Skype)
Adriana Briscoe
Nicola Chamberlain
Brian Counterman
Larry Gilbert
Ryan Hill
Chris Jiggins
Robert …

I have established a server for sharing of unpublished genomic data among the community using a portal called CamTools run by the University of Cambridge. The agreement is that anyone using the site agrees to share ‘genome’ scale data sets with other users. Currently this is primarily Genome Survey Sequences, BAC clone sequences and transcriptomic sequence, but could be extended to other kinds of data as they become available. The aim is to make such information available for comparative analysis to all groups prior to publication. …

The Heliconius Genome Consortium recently met in Harvard to discuss the upcoming sequencing of several Heliconius genomes. The agreed plan is that we will start by sequencing Heliconius melpomene melpomene at around 15x coverage using 454 technology.  This will include a proportion of both 20kb and 2kb insert paired end reads.  In addition, we plan to resequence H. melpomene aglaope and H. cydno using Solexa at around 30x, as a proof of principle for genome resequencing.
A more details summary of the meeting should appear on this site in the near …