About the Mnemiopsis Genome Project

In collaboration with our colleagues at the University of Florida and the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC), we have sequenced, assembled, annotated, and performed a preliminary analysis of the 150-megabase genome of Mnemiopsis, with roughly 12x coverage of the genome.

Briefly, a combination of Roche 454 sequencing and Illumina GA-II mate-pair sequencing was performed on genomic DNA isolated from the embryos of two self-fertilized adults (OGL ID: S24180), yielding a final assembly of 5,100 scaffolds with 160-fold physical coverage and an N50 of 187 kb. In addition, RNAseq data from mixed-stage Mnemiopsis embryos, generated using Illumina GA-II sequencing, was assembled using our genome sequence. These RNAseq transcript fragments, along with 15,752 publicly available EST sequences and 96 publicly available mRNA sequences, were used as the basis for transcriptome annotation. Manual inspection of predictions was also performed against 90 experimentally verified RACE transcripts. Based on this work, the Mnemiopsis genome is predicted to contain 16,548 genes and 91,482 exons.

For additional information, comments, or questions regarding the Mnemiopsis Genome Project, please contact Dr. Baxevanis at andy@nhgri.nih.gov.

Changes to the MGP Portal and underlying data are documented in the Release History.

Mnemiopsis Genome Project Team

Computational and Statistical Genomics Branch
Division of Intramural Research
National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH

Computational Genomics Unit

Andy Baxevanis, Ph.D., Head
Joseph Ryan, Ph.D.
Christine Schnitzler, Ph.D.
Evan Maxwell
Bernard Koch
Katherine Siewert


Bioinformatics and Scientific Programming Core

Tyra Wolfsberg, Ph.D., Associate Director
Travis Moreland, M.S.
Anh-Dao Nguyen, M.S.


Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, University of Florida

Mark Martindale, Ph.D., Director
Kevin Pang, Ph.D.
David Simmons


NIH Intramural Sequencing Center

James Mullikin, Ph.D., Director
Robert Blakesley, Ph.D., Director, Sequencing Group
Natalie Gurson
Richelle Legaspi
Betsy Novotny
Brian Schmidt
Alice Young


Brown University

Casey Dunn, Ph.D.


Rice University

Nicholas Putnam, Ph.D.
Paul Havlak, Ph.D.


University of Michigan

Stephen Smith, Ph.D.