Sequencing of the common starfish genome

As part of their 25th Anniversary celebrations, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is going to sequence 25 new genomes in 2018, five of which have been decided by public vote. Our lab was part of a team, led by Prof. Maurice Elphick from Queen Mary University in London, championing the common starfish, Asterias rubens, as one of the candidate species. Over five weeks, scientists competed for votes from school students and the public, and answered questions about everything to do with their species and genome sequencing. The common starfish was one of the winners!