Caenorhabditis briggsae

Caenorhabditis briggsae is a small nematode that lives in the soil. It diverged from C. elegans approximately 100 million years ago, although it is morphologically almost indistinguishable from it. Protein encoding sequences are mostly conserved between the two nematodes, yet most intergenic and intronic sequences are divergent.

The study and comparison of the C. briggsae genome with that of C. elegans is expected to reveal new insights into genetic finding such as function, regulation and even supply evolutionary information.

SigNetUK is gradually finding sequence similarities of the components of the Drosophila hedgehog signalling pathway along the C. elegans genome. As an aid to ascertain the likelihood of identifying homologues in C. elegans, the current C. briggsae genome will be used for comparison.