Leonid Moroz is THE Aplysia genome project master. He started off his talk with some history on how the genome project got started. The largest problem was that Aplysia has a genome with a high simple repeat content. These problems were so big that the project had to be re-started just a few months ago and is now preliminarily scheduled to be completed by 2009.
Early results of the parallel transcriptome project show a stunning diversity of gene expression. For example, the metacerebral cell in the cerebral ganglion may express up to 121 receptors. Some immune genes (e.g., RAG1) have been found which are uniquely shared with Aplysia and humans/chordates. The expression patterns of about 120 neuronal genes have been analyzed so far.
Microarray studies are working fairly well so far. For example, all developmental stages can be distinguished using currently available gene chips.
Homology studies are on the way to compare gene expression between the different gastropod model systems and are yielding the first interesting results (e.g. Clione transcripts specific to swimming motor neurons are expressed in Aplysia homologue cells).
Interestingly, 40% of all transcripts are non-coding.