• Question: For these species, will you be using the males or females? Is one gender better for sequencing than the other gender?

    Asked by tamarakacsala to Twisted-wing fly, Snake Pipefish, Scottish Crossbill, Orkney vole, Naval Shipworm, Common starfish, Brachiopod, Baltic clam, Abyssal Grenadier on 7 Dec 2017.
    • Photo: Common Starfish

      Common Starfish answered on 7 Dec 2017:

      For sequencing the starfish genome we could use either a male or a female.

    • Photo: Naval Shipworm

      Naval Shipworm answered on 7 Dec 2017:

      Hi! For many species it doesn’t matter whether males or females are used, but in some species (like humans) one gender has slightly different chromosomes. For naval shipworms, they begin life as male, and then turn into females, with no change of chromosomes, so we can use either!

    • Photo: Abyssal Grenadier

      Abyssal Grenadier answered on 7 Dec 2017:

      Male or female! We just hope to be the first ever deep sea genome sequenced!

    • Photo: Snake Pipefish

      Snake Pipefish answered on 7 Dec 2017:

      Both would be interesting, but to study paternal care and the male pregnancy displayed by snake pipefish and all members of its family (all seahorses, pipefish and seadragons), it would make more sense to sequence a male.

    • Photo: Twisted-wing Fly

      Twisted-wing Fly answered on 8 Dec 2017:

      We can use a male or a female, for the current TWF project we already have males available, but no females yet.

    • Photo: Orkney Vole

      Orkney Vole answered on 8 Dec 2017:

      It probably doesn’t matter, except for the fact that male voles have a Y chromosome that female voles don’t, whereas there are no bits of DNA in female voles that are not found in male voles. So given the choice we’d probably sequence a male. In reality we’d actually sequence lots of voles, both male and female.

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