[HELICONIUS] W-linked markers

[lgilbert at mail.utexas.edu]

Pupae are easy to sex morphologically

LG

Quoting Alexie Papanicolaou <alpapan at googlemail.com>:

> Hi Jamie
>
> if you sequenced a male, then there will be nothing W-specific in the
> genome... there will shared elements though which could be
> over-represented in the W.
>
> your question is much easier though. we've had 3 approaches that worked.
>
> Hard, molecular approach
> Dissecting the w of a butterfly, cloning and sanger sequencing
> W-specific repeats (Fukova in Applied Entomology)
> Also you can try a AFLP bulk segregation analysis on a family of male
> and females with the parents. markers on mum and daughters are w linked.
>
> Easy, lethal physiological approach
> Chop it up. There will be two large (yellow or white) bodies in the
> males. Testis... for us it works well with L3+ even though our moth
> larvae are much smaller than heliconius larvae
>
> Fiddly, fool-proof cytogenetic approach
> take a spot of hemolymph (no need to kill it). make a squash preparation
> with lactic orcein. look under 40x. if the nuclei have a big black spot,
> it's the W body and it's a female... Let me know if you need the
> protocol (should be in above paper). It's not that fiddly when you learn
> it and you can process lots of larvae in a day (you can do the
> microscope work another day)
>
> cheers
> a
>
>
> On Wed, 2010-04-14 at 11:57 +0100, Jamie Walters wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'm curious to know if anyone has had any success (or informative
>> failures...?) with developing W-linked markers for Heliconius (or any
>> butterfly that would be near enough to be useful).
>>
>> Or, alternatively, if anyone has any particularly clever ideas for
>> mining the existing genome data for candidate regions I'd be keen to
>> hear them.
>>
>> I'm simply interested in being able to sex juveniles and pupae.
>>
>>
>> Thanks very much,
>>
>> Jamie
>>
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>
>
>