An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome from the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum, making it the first beetle and the first insect pest, whose genome has been sequenced.

A large international research consortium consisting of 64 research groups from 14 countries with the participation of a research team around Professor Cornelis Grimmelikhuijzen has now sequenced the genome from Tribolium. This genome consists of about 200 million nucleotides (DNA building blocks) that code for about 16,000 genes (or 16,000 proteins). These sequencing efforts are extremely important for agriculture and will enable the development of new methods for the protection of food plants against beetles.

The findings have been published in Nature (pdf version available for download ).