Meeting Abstract

P1.53  Friday, Jan. 4  Functional Characterization of the Asymmetron lucayanum Genome YUE, J.*; HOLLAND, L.Z.; YU, J.; PUTNAM, N.H.; Rice University; Univ. of California, San Diego; Academia Sinica; Rice University yjx@rice.edu

The tropical lancelet Asymmetron lucayanum is a representative species of cephalochordates. The study of it, together with the comparison with the other cephalochordate species, Branchiostoma floridae, can shed important light on our understanding about the evolution of cephalochordates. Here, we report a whole genome analysis on individuals collected from the wild. Using the published genome draft of B. floridae as the reference, we are able to capture a considerable amount of genomic information with regard to their coding sequences and some conserved non-coding sequences, although these two species have diverged for a long time. Besides, the transcriptomes of Asymmetron lucayanum genome at two different developmental stages were characterized by RNA-seq technique. The assembly of these transcripts, together with the whole genome sequencing data, revealed valuable information with regard to A. lucayanum’s genomic evolution in both of its coding and regulatory regions. For coding regions, the joint comparison with those from B. floridae, urochordates and vertebrates helped to identify genes under strong positive selection in Branchiostoma, Asymmetron or on the cephalochordate stem lineage. For the noncoding regions, a collection of putative conserved noncoding regions were identified, among which the top candidates are under further experimental examinations to assess their regulatory activities.