What does an ant genome look like?

Bits and pieces of an ongoing project to sequence the genome of the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes have started going up on Genbank- Have a look!

Of course, these are just raw strings of nucleotides that haven't yet been annotated or analyzed in any meaningful way. The real science won't begin until researchers begin testing hypotheses against the data. But the raw material is there, and this is the first sequence from the ant genome projects to see the light of day. Exciting stuff!

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Great, now if they'll just sequence the Octopus vulgaris genome...

By Katharine (not verified) on 14 May 2010 #permalink

I would have started with Myrmecia pilosula. Baby steps, ya'know?

By Peter Coffey (not verified) on 14 May 2010 #permalink

Great! Now we only have Myrmcecia pilosula, Solenopsis invicta, Linepithema humile,...