Plans to sequence the entire genome of Acropora millepora, a branching coral familiar to millions of visitors to the Great Barrier Reef, marks a major milestone in Australian biotechnology: it will be the first animal genome to be fully sequenced and assembled in this country.

The mapping of the coral genome is a collaborative venture between the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) and researchers in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) located at James Cook University and the ANU.  A bioinformatics team established from a range of Australian research institutions will actively support project design, assembly and annotation of the genome.

The project hopes to uncover more about the biology of corals and contribute to their preservation in the face of environmental stress.  Corals lie deep on the ancestral tree of all animals and share many human genes suggesting that this mapping project could provide significant insights into the mechanisms underlying the evolution of life on earth  and the molecular basis of many human genetic disorders.

“Next-generation” sequencing technology developed by the biotech company Illumina will be used for the project.  The latest sequencing technology demonstrates the vast strides made in sequencing technology which provides massive data sets for a fraction of the costs of mapping the human genome.

Contact:  Professor David Miller (07) 4781 4473 of CoECRS and JCU and Dr Eldon Ball (02)6125 4496 at the ANU.
http://www.coralcoe.org.au/