Tribolium castaneum
Resource Type | Organism |
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Genus | Tribolium |
Species | castaneum |
Common Name | red flour beetle |
Description | Tribolium castaneum, the red flour beetle, is a secondary pest of stored grain. It has emerged as a premier genetic model organism for studies of development and pest management. A robust RNAi response at any life stage has enabled functional studies of all live stages covering processes from development to physiology. In terms of genetic and transgenic tools including genome wide RNAi screening, T. castaneum is an insect model second only to D. melanogaster. T. castaneum is a cosmopolitan pest of wheat that is easily reared in the laboratory on a diet of whole wheat flour supplemented with 5% yeast. At 29C, T. castaneum completes embryonic development in 3 days and generally undergoes 6 larval molts before metamorphosis into adults. Although the life cycle can be completed within 3 weeks, adults can live for a year while females reproduce for several months. The T. castaneum genome contains 10 autosomes, an X and a Y. The genome is 200Mb, 160 of which have been captured in the latest genome assembly, Tcas_5.2. The original 7x Sanger draft was improved with additional NGS data and 90% of the assembled sequence has been mapped to Linkage Groups. Scaffolds in the resulting CHLG builds have been merged ordered and oriented using optical maps. |
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Image Credit | Copyright Susan J. Brown |