Rice University scientists featured in journal for marine life study

A limpet, a sea snail-type creature, was one of the species studied by Rice University scientists and others. Their findings were recently featured in Nature.

Scientists from Rice University were recently featured in a journal for their studies of genomes of marine life species.

According to a press release issued Wednesday, Dec. 19, "A new report in Nature unveils three of the first genomes from a vast, understudied swath of the animal kingdom that includes as many as one-quarter of Earth's marine species. By publishing the genomes of a leech, an ocean-dwelling worm and a limpet, scientists from Rice University, the University of California-Berkeley and the Joint Genome Institute have more than doubled the number of sequenced genomes from a diverse group of animals called lophotrochozoans."

"Most animals, including people, have body plans with bilateral symmetry, which means they have left and right sides that are mirror images of one other," said co-author Nicholas Putnam, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Rice, in a press release. "When you look at all bilaterian species, you can divide them into three big groups that biologists call clades. Lophotrochozoans are one of these clades, and when we looked at all of the genomes that had been sequenced, we found that only two were lophotrochozoans. That left a big hole in the genetic record, and our goal with this study was to fill in some of the gaps in that blank space."

Rice University is at 6100 Main, Houston.

For more information, call 713-348-4058 or email david@rice.edu.

Rice University, one of America's top-rated teaching and research universities, is located in west Houston. A private college, it enrolls 3,279 undergraduates and 2,277 graduate students.