Caenorhabditis elegans (Nematode, N2) assembly and gene annotation

Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode, about 1 mm in length, that lives in temperate soil environments. In 1974, Sydney Brenner began research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans, which has since been extensively used as a model organism, being the first multicellular species to have its whole genome sequenced.

Assembly

Genome sequence and annotation have been imported from the WS269 release of WormBase (which includes the WBcel235 version of the C.elegans reference genome). Included are annotated operons, genes, transcripts and translations, as well as RNAi and BLAST/BLAT homology data. In addition Affymetrix and Agilent cross references for C.elegans expression arrays have been added.

We include C.elegans in Ensembl (and also Ensembl Genomes) to allow people to access the data through the Ensembl user interface (both for visualisation and data mining) and to provide cross-species integration through our comparative genomics resources (such as homologous gene links and protein family pages).

Other assemblies

• WS190 (Ensembl release 54)

Gene annotation

This species and other invertebrates are also available from our sister site, Ensembl Metazoa

More information

General information about this species can be found in Wikipedia.