‘There are still many unresolved questions about spiders. However, science often pays less attention to spiders than other animals,’ says Yannis Schöneberg. The Biogeography researcher at Trier University is fascinated by the eight-legged creatures that many people are afraid of. ‘There are more than 52,000 spider species worldwide. But the genome, i.e. the genetic material, is only available for very few of them,’ says Schöneberg, explaining what, among other things, makes spiders interesting for him. Very fundamental questions, such as which spiders actually belong to a species and how the species have evolved, are still unanswered. The fact that the scientists in Trier have now published the blueprint of the three spiders is the foundation for further research.
Research was a jigsaw puzzle
Despite the support of a supercomputer and artificial intelligence, decoding the genome was a real puzzle that took the researchers many hours. The individual pieces of DNA had to be organised and the beginning and end of the genes identified. ‘As most of the methods used to decode the genes were developed for humans and the spider genome is very large, this was not at all easy,’ reports Schöneberg. He and the Biogeography team came across an interesting mutation in the so-called Hox genes, which are responsible for the categorisation of body parts. One of the researchers' aims is to better understand the evolution of spiders: Why does the body structure of spiders differ so extremely? Why have a few spiders lost their venom glands - but most have not?
