Capitella Genome Project Portal

Annelids, known as the segmented worms, are commonly found (successfully colonized) in a wide range of marine and aquatic habitats. Capitella teleta (Blake, Grassle and Eckelbarger, 2009) formerly known as Capitella sp. I, is a representative annelid and a member of the superphylum Spiralia. C. teleta was among the first spiralians to have its genome sequenced. The emergence of third-generation, long-read sequencing and chromatin conformation capture approaches have now made obtaining a reference, chromosome-scale genome assembly for Capitella possible.

Capitella is a model for evolutionary developmental studies and is one of the major protostome bio-indicators of disturbed marine habitats. The body of Capitella reflects its identity as a benthic, burrowing segmented worm found in estuarine environments. It exhibits characteristic features of annelids, including a segmented body plan, hydrostatic skeleton, centralized nervous system, continued adult growth by addition of segments from a posterior growth zone, regenerative abilities, holoblastic spiral cleavage program, and an indirect life cycle. Early characterization of embryogenesis and larval development date back to the late 1800s by Hugo Eisig. Embryological and molecular genetic studies of Capitella have made crucial contributions towards understanding the evolution of spiralians, a speciose, ecologically and economically important, but understudied animal group. Accordingly, numerous embryological, functional and genomic tools and resources have been generated to study Capitella, from animal husbandry, embryological manipulations and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated mutagenesis to developmental time series of transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility data.

The Capitella Genome Project Portal is intended as a resource for investigators from across scientific communities to obtain genomic information on Capitella through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. The scope of data available through this website goes well beyond the sequence data available through GenBank and Ensembl Metazoa, providing a single, centralized portal for annotations and other key biological information, such as ATAC-seq data and mitochondrial genome data. The availability of these data will provide continued opportunities to investigate a range of questions across biology subdisciplines, such as studies of genome evolution and its role in body plan and life history evolution in Metazoa.