attines
awild | April 29, 2009
Atta cephalotes, in the fungus garden
Big ant news today! Roche Applied Sciences is apparently funding the sequencing of a series of genomes- three ant and an array of fungal and microbial genomes- in an ambitious project to better understand the relationships among the players in the celebrated ant-fungus relationship. The sequencing project is headed by Nicole Gerardo of Emory University and Cameron Currie of the University of Wisconsin.
This trend in genomics away from sequencing isolated organisms in favor of comparative projects is a welcome one. With multiple attine species- in…