FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Scientists at J. Craig Venter Institute
Publish Draft Genome Sequence from Aedes aegypti, Mosquito
Responsible for Yellow Fever, Dengue Fever Genome is Larger and
More Complex Compared to Fruit Fly and Mosquito Species that
Carries Malaria ROCKVILLE, MD â€”Â May 17, 2007 â€”Â The fight
against yellow fever and dengue fever was advanced today by an
international team of researchers led by Vishvanath Nene, Ph.D.
of the J. Craig Venter Institute who sequenced the Aedes aegypti
genome, the mosquito that carries these deadly diseases. The
research was published in the journal Science. This research is
the first characterization of the approximately 1.38 billion
base pairs of DNA of the Ae. aegypti genome. From this sequence,
the team showed that this mosquito species has an estimated 15,
419 protein encoding genes. Since both the sequence of the fruit
fly, Drosophila melanogaster (sequenced in 1999 and published in
2000) and another mosquito species, Anopheles gambiae,
(sequenced and publishe