Genomics of Basal metazoans

An in-depth understanding of the biology of animals will requirethe generation of genomics resources from organisms from allphyla in the metazoan phylogenetic tree. Such resources willideally include complete genome sequences and comprehensiveEST (expressed sequence tag) datasets for each species of interest.Of particular interest in this regard are animals in the earlydiverging non-bilaterian phyla Porifera, Placozoa, Cnidaria,and Ctenophora. Publications describing the results from theuse of genomics approaches in these phyla have only recentlybegun to appear (Kortschak et al., 2003; Yang et al., 2003;Steele et al., 2004). Issues to be considered here include choosingthe basal metazoan species to examine with genomics approaches,the relative advantages and disadvantages of genome sequencingversus EST projects, and the resources and infrastructure requiredto carry out such projects successfully.