Project Number: 5320-21000-011-14
Project Type: Grant

Start Date: Sep 30, 2008
End Date: Aug 31, 2010

Objective:
Fruit flies are the most important agricultural problem in Hawaii and also a very important problem in the southern United States. PBARC has embarked on research to use genomics information of these fruit flies as an approach to develop and improve on practical control measures, such as the sterile fruit fly technique and development of crops that are resistant to fruit flies. Obtaining genome sequence information of the fruit flies is an important approach in developing practical control measures of fruit flies. The objective of SCA is to sequence the genome of the Oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis).

Approach:
The sequencing project will be done in collaboration with the Advanced Studies in Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics (ASGPB) laboratory of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. DNA of the Oriental fruit fly will be isolated by PBARC and provided to the ASGPB laboratory. The ASGPB laboratory will use the newly acquired 454 Pyrosequencing Machine to generate a 20X sequence coverage of the oriental fruit fly genome, which is approximately 412 megabases in size. The sequence data will be deposited at PBARC and will be made available to the scientific community on a timely basis. This SCA only covers the obtaining of the sequence data for the Oriental fruit fly and the initial assembly of the genome. Subsequent work will focus on the complete assembly and annotation of the generated sequences.