The Lumbricus rubellus genome project is coordinated from Edinburgh by Ben Elsworth, a BBSRC-funded PhD student and Mark Blaxter. Both are in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology of the University of Edinburgh.
The project is embedded within Mark Blaxter's research group, and relies upon the skills and expertise of wet lab technologists and skilled bioinformaticians (and their tools) within the GenePool. GenePool is managed by Dr Karim Gharbi, and is part of NERC's Biomolecular Analysis Facility (NBAF).
The earthworm expertise for the project comes from a team of collaborators based across the UK and abroad.
Peter Kille and John Morgan are earthworm ecologists and excotoxicologists based at the University of Cardiff, where they have been using molecular tools to unravel earthworm diversity and specifically L. rubellus' responses to heavy metals in the soils. Pete and John braved the mines of North Wales to track down, capture and genotype the single specimens that underpin the genome project
David Spurgeon and Claus Svendsen are earthworm ecologists based in the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford. Claus and Dave can breed earthworms, and have long experience of exposure and treatment of cultured l. rubellus.
Stephen Sturzenbaum is based in London
Jake Bundy is a metabolomics expert based at Imperial College, London
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