ABSTRACT
An organism’s genome contains all of its genetic information, and thus sequenced genomes provide the basis for the entire field of biological sciences. At the end of 2006, genomes of six groups of invertebrates had been decoded, including two species of nematode worms, two species of insect flies, an insect mosquito, an insect silkworm, a social honeybee, an echinoderm sea urchin, and an urochordate ascidian. We review here comparative and characteristic features of the genome of each animal and discuss the significant role of genome information in exploring various problems in animal biology.
