C. elegans Fosmid Library
The availability of genomic clones with 35 to 40kb inserts has
been a critical resource to the C. elegans community.
Fingerprinted and ordered cosmid clones harboring such inserts were
the backbone of the sequencing project. Further utility was found,
when individual research labs were trying to map mutants.
Complementing a mutant by injecting a strain with overlapping
cosmid clones eventually led to mutation identity. This approach is
still widely used and is an important tool for mutational analysis.
Many of the cosmid libraries are now 20 years old and there are
reports of some of them losing viability.
With these considerations in mind Don Moerman et al
have chosen to make a fosmid rather than a cosmid library. The
library was constructed using the fosmid vector pCC1FOS (Epicentre)
and is maintained at low copy number until induced. The use of
fosmids as backbones allows for the maintenance of large pieces of
DNA (around 40kB) in limited number (1-5) per bacterial host. Up to
this point, such a resource was unavailable for C.
elegans.
The N2 fosmid clones are mapped to the C. elegans
genome by pair-wise alignment of fosmid end-reads. Initial analysis
of the library quality shows that the average insert size is ~
43,284 bp and 86.7% of the clones have paired end-reads with
correct relative orientation. The library obtained approximately
5.74X clone coverage of the genome
This resource was presented at the Fifteenth International C. elegans
meeting.
Format
Source BioScience LifeSciences offers the complete clone set of
41 384-well microtitre plates or individual clones, for research
purposes only. There's also a C. elegans FOS finder tool available
that allows you to search for your gene or region of interest.
Alternatively, clones may be searched by accessing WormBase. We can also make subsets
of your chosen clones from the collection. Please contact us
to discuss your requirements.
References
Jaryn Perkins1,2, Kim
Wong3, René
Warren3, Jacquie
Schein3, Jeff
Stott3, Rob Holt3,
Steve Jones3, Marco
Marra3, and Don
Moerman1,2
- 1Michael Smith Laboratories, U.B.C.,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
- 2Department of Zoology, University of
British Columbia, B.C. Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4
- 3Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer
Agency, Vancouver, B.C. Canada, V5Z 4S6