5,000 Insect Genome Project (i5k) launches

Finding new ways to protect plants against insect attacks will be aided by a new project that was launched recently. The 5,000 Insect Genome Project (i5k) will sequence the genomes of 5,000 insects and other arthropods over the next five years.

The 5,000 Insect Genome Project was recently launched with a letter to Science from 10 signers known as the i5k Ad Hoc Launch Group. The work would contribute to a better understanding of insect biology and help transform the way arthropods are managed.

"We hope that generating this data will lead to better models for insecticide resistance, better models for developing new pesticides, better models for understanding transmission of disease, or for control of agricultural pests," said Daniel Lawson, a coordinator at the European Bioinformatics Institute, told American Entomologist. "Moving into the genetics era revolutionizes what you can do, what you can try to assay in your species, what you can infer from your experiments."

According to Gene E. Robinson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "This will provide information that breeders would need to look for ways of dealing with insect resistance to pesticides. It would also provide geneticists with information on what might be vulnerable points in an insect's makeup, which could be used for novel control strategies."