Why have these insects been selected for a genome project?
The twenty-four insect species have been selected for a genome project for different reasons. First, some insects are model organisms, such as the fruitfly D. melanogaster, which is a well-established model for geneticists and developmental and molecular biologists. The other Drosophila species have been sequenced to help with the interpretation of the D. melanogaster genome (2, 3).
A second class are the medically important insects that are vectors for serious diseases, such as malaria (the mosquito A. gambiae), yellow fever (the mosquito A. aegypti), elephantiasis (the mosquito C. pipiens), Chagas disease (the blood-sucking bug R. prolixus), and typhus (the body louse P. humanus).
A third class are the insects that are agriculturally important. To them belong agriculturally beneficial insects, such as the honey bee A. mellifera, which is a major pollinator of food plants and producer of honey, and the silkworm B. mori, which produces silk. In contrast to them, the red flour beetle T. castaneum (which destroys stored grain and many other dried and stored commodities for human consumption) and the pea aphid A. pisum (which causes severe damage to green food plants) are serious agricultural pests. The parasitic wasp N. vitripennis and the other two Nasonia species have been selected, because of their potentials for biological pest control (they lay eggs into a variety of agricultural pest insects).