Title

Dung beetle database: comparison with other invertebrate transcriptomes

Authors

 Lucky M Khanyile¹, Rodney Hull¹ and Monde Ntwasa^1, *

Affiliation

¹Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Gatehouse 512, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits - 2050, South Africa.

Email

 monde.ntwasa@wits.ac.za

Article Type

Database

Date

received November 12, 2008; accepted December 01, 2008; published December 06, 2008

Abstract

The dung beetle E. intermedius, a member of the highly diverse order, Coleoptera has immense economic benefits. It was estimated that insect ecological services in the United States amounted to some $60 billion in 2006 with dung beetles being major contributors. E. intermedius may be endowed with a robust immune system given its microbe-rich habitat. Dung beetles live on juice and microbes from the dung and are therefore, potential models for the study of infectious agents and ecological damage. The E. intermedius database is a web-based system for the genome and transcriptome of the dung beetle. The database will be expanded to include differentially expressed genes in response o various stresses especially infectious agents such as fungi, bacteria and viruses.

Keywords

 E. intermedius; coleopteran; insect immunity; invertebrate transcriptomes; database

Citation

 Khanyile et al., Bioinformation 3(4): 159-161 (2008)

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

Copyright

Publisher

Copyright Transfer Agreement

The authors of published articles in Bioinformation automatically transfer the copyright to the publisher upon formal acceptance. However, the authors reserve right to use the information contained in the article for non commercial purposes.

License

This is an open-access article, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, for non-commercial purposes, provided the original author and source are credited.