%0 Journal Article %T Genomic sequence of a mutant strain of Caenorhabditis elegans with an altered recombination pattern %A Ann M Rose %A Nigel J O'Neil %A Mikhail Bilenky %A Yaron S Butterfield %A Nawar Malhis %A Stephane Flibotte %A Martin R Jones %A Marco Marra %A David L Baillie %A Steven JM Jones %J BMC Genomics %D 2010 %I BioMed Central %R 10.1186/1471-2164-11-131 %X Using Illumina sequencing and MAQ software, 83% of the base pair sequence reads were aligned to the reference genome available at Wormbase, providing a 21-fold coverage of the genome. Using the software programs MAQ and Slider, we observed 1124 base pair differences between Rec-1 and the reference genome in Wormbase (WS190), and 441 between the mutagenized Rec-1 (BC313) and the wild-type N2 strain (VC2010). The most frequent base-substitution was G:C to A:T, 141 for the entire genome most of which were on chromosomes I or X, 55 and 31 respectively. With this data removed, no obvious pattern in the distribution of the base differences along the chromosomes was apparent. No major chromosomal rearrangements were observed, but additional insertions of transposable elements were detected. There are 11 extra copies of Tc1, and 8 of Tc2 in the Rec-1 genome, most likely the remains of past high-hopper activity in a progenitor strain.Our analysis of high-throughput sequencing was able to detect regions of direct repeat sequences, deletions, insertions of transposable elements, and base pair differences. A subset of sequence alterations affecting coding regions were confirmed by an independent approach using oligo array comparative genome hybridization. The major phenotype of the Rec-1 strain is an alteration in the preferred position of the meiotic recombination event with no other significant phenotypic consequences. In this study, we observed no evidence of a mutator effect at the nucleotide level attributable to the Rec-1 mutation.Caenorhabditis elegans is an animal model widely used in biomedical and biological research. C. elegans was the first animal to have its genome completely sequenced [1] and the compiled and annotated sequence is available at WormBase http://www.wormbase.org webcite. The ready availability of genomic sequence information along with an extensive body of knowledge about gene function in this species provides an exceptional opportunity to examine th %U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/131