John Kim demonstrated the results obtained from SSAKE assembly on POG.

• SSAKE is a short read De novo assembly program.
• Came out only when Solexa had short reads.
• Algorithm needs ~25mer perfect error free reads.
• Basically requires dataset to be perfect.
• SSAKE is an example of consensus overlapping.
• Hashes the reads, where sequence is the key, and the number of occurrences of the sequence constitutes value.
• Has memory issues.
• Builds prefix tree of all the overlaps, until all the reads have exact overlap with the seed.
• It is a greedy algorithm.
• SSAKE when applied on POG mate-paired data, the data was trimmed and translated.
• This algorithm is not much useful as it produces very poor results.
• Not a good assembler for Banana Slug genome.

Jenny talked about the mechanism behind Banana Slug locomotion.

• The entire bottom of slug is its foot.
• It moves along the whole length of foot creating muscular wave.
• The surface of the slug has sticky mucus which assists their movement.
• The motion flow is referred to as : Non-Newtonian flow.
• Retrograde motion, where waves go backward and slug moves forward.
• Speed of wave is proportional to speed of slugs. It has been determined that wave is 3.3 faster than slug motion.
• Interwave - where a muscle relaxes and stretches.
• At MIT robo-slugs are developed to study the mechanism behind slug locomotion.
• For mucus they mix laponite (a kind of clay) in water.
• The basic mechanism behind slug locomotion is : slide → stick → pull.
• slugs can move only with mucus.
• Studies are done to see what happens when mucus dries.
• The mucus layer is thin, has the property of suction.
• 30% of energy required for locomotion is spent on making glycoprotein, 10% on the muscular motion, and the rest on the inefficiency of motion.
• Several studies are done on stress vs strain rate.