Over the past years, several significant advances have been made towards developing aphids as a model system for evolutionary genetics and genomics. The International Aphid Genomic Consortium  was created in Paris (June 2003) in order to coordinate various efforts, both to cut down on unnecessary redundancy and to enhance the likelihood of future for large-scale projects. The ultimate goal of this network is to develop the aphid model system to the same level of molecular, cell, and developmental biological understanding as other model insects (mosquito, drosophila, Lepidoptera, bee…), but with the added advantage of being able to more easily study the mechanisms of adaptation and biotic interactions in the context of natural and agronomic environments.

 

The IAGC Board includes :

Denis Tagu (INRA, France) is the co-Regional Representative for Europe/Africa
Toni Gabaldon (CRG, Spain) is the co-Regional Representative for Europe/Africa
Nicole Gerardo(Emory university, USA) is the Regional Representative for the Americas
Owain Edwards (CSIRO, Australia) is the Regional Representative for Asia/Oceania   

If you are willing to become a member of the IAGC, please register at the IAGC  membership page and to the  aphidgenomics mailing list.

Beside their annual meeting, IAGC is delivering various steering documents for the groups belonging to the consortium (White Paper, White Paper II). They are now working on a third white paper describing needs around

• aphid genome sequencing in the context of the I5K initiative
• ecological genomics
• functional tool development
• bioinformatic tool development