Abstract
The fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most intensively studied
organisms in biology and serves as a model system for the investigation
of many developmental and cellular processes common to higher eukaryotes,
including humans. We have determined the nucleotide sequence of nearly
all of the ~120-megabase euchromatic portion of the Drosophila genome
using a whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy supported by extensive
clone-based sequence and a high-quality bacterial artificial chromosome
physical map. Efforts are under way to close the remaining gaps;
however, the sequence is of sufficient accuracy and contiguity to
be declared substantially complete and to support an initial analysis
of genome structure and preliminary gene annotation and interpretation.
The genome encodes ~13,600 genes, somewhat fewer than the smaller
Caenorhabditis elegans genome, but with comparable functional diversity.
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