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Welcome to the Darter Genomics web site. It is hoped that this web site will act as an organizing nucleus for the formation of a consortium of laboratories working together to utilize darter genomics as a tool to better understand the evolution of darter species and darter biology. While affordable sequencing of the entire darter genome is a few years (decades?) in the future, one way to get started is to begin with the analysis of a reasonable number of genes. As part of a project to characterize the population structure of the Tallapoosa darter, twelve PCR primer pairs have been designed that amplify potions of six single copy genes. In total, approximately 10,000 base pairs of nuclear DNA is amplified by these primers. These primers were designed to be anchored in exon sequences that are fairly well conserved among fish species. A preliminary test has shown that these primers will likely work cross species. Orthologous sequences have been amplified from Etheostoma tallapoosae, Etheostoma coosae, as well as Etheostoma brevirostrum and verified by sequencing. Specific amplification products with all primer pairs have also been obtained from Percina roanoka, Percina palmaris, and Percina austroperka, though these have not been verified by sequencing as yet (DNA samples for the cross species tests were kindly provided by Dr. Thomas Near). Since these primers will likely work in all darter species (with, perhaps, as slight tweaking for some), they may be of utility in producing data sets to aid in the elucidation of darter phylogeny. It is outside the scope of my laboratory (and perhaps most laboratories) to perform such a large DNA sequencing project. It is hoped that a large enough number of laboratories may form a consortium where each laboratory would contribute sequence data for one or more darter species. To facilitate such a collaborative effort, this web site has been created to disseminate all information needed to amplify and analyze sequences from the six characterized gene regions. Along with this web site, a wiki based Darterpedia website has been put into operation to enable a collaborative environment where interested individuals can communicate their intent, their progress, contribute sequence data and contribute to the phylogenetic analysis of data. Primer design and web site creation by: Leos Kral Darter Genomics Laboratory Department of Biology University of West Georgia Carrollton, GA 30118 lkral@westga.edu 678-839-4023

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