Project “i5K”: An Initiative to Unravel the Insect Genome

Abstract

Insects comprised of 75% of the animal kingdom that have been evolved around 350 million years ago. The abundance and complexity of insects have enabled them to establish in all kind of habitats from salt water lakes to high altitude mountain ranges. Among diverse insects, major orders such as Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Diptera that include crop pests while Hymenopteran mainly include the social insects and biocontrol agents have been well evolved over time and different host ranges. Though, different chemical and non-chemical control strategies have been well developed, yet their resurgence, outbreak and resistance are the major concern for the entomologists. Thus, developing ecologically suitable and economically viable method for pest control is the need of the hour. So, deciphering the insect genome, targeting the elite gene can be a suitable novel method in this context. So, a major project i.e., i5K had been formulated in 2011, by Robinson and his colleagues to sequence the unexplored insect genome within a period of 5 years.