Pleurobrachia bachei (pronounced Plure-oh-brake-ee-yuh bahk-ee-eye), also known as the sea gooseberry, is a species of cydippid (tentacle-bearing) ctenophore from the western Atlantic Ocean. This was the second ctenophore species to have its genome sequenced, assembled, and published. This publication, lead by Dr. Leonid L. Moroz, showed that ctenophores, despite having neurons, lack many of the essential neuron genes found in bilaterian animals
The published genome size of P. bachei is approximately 150 Mb, however an analysis of the k-mer spectrum from single individual Illumina Whole Genome Shotgun (WGS) sequencing reads suggest that the actual genome size is 100 Mb.
Resources
The authoritative source for information on the Pleurobrachia bachei genome, can be found at the University of Florida Neurobase. At the time of writing this article, the genome browser seems to not be functioning.
Publications
The following are select papers about P. bachei. They are arranged by topic. This list is by no means exhaustive – please contact us if you have a paper to add.