``The combined strengths of a basic research tool and economic importance of silk makes silkworm an excellent biological system to initiate genome studies'', says an official of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) which has created a separate division for silkworm genome programme with scientists of six different institutions participating in it.

France will be a partner in this project under an agreement signed recently between DBT and the French scientific agency CNRS.

Containing about 500 million base pairs in 28 pairs of chromosomes the silkworm genome is one-sixth the size of human. DBT said the plan is to map the genome of a hybrid silkworm produced by crossing an Indian variety called `pure Mysore with the Japanese silk worm named NB-18.

``These two silkworms have been identified as the source populations because of the high degree of genetic variations between them -a prerequisite for mapping'', says DBT.

The silk genome work is being coordinated by Lalji Singh, an expert on DNA fingerprinting, who has been appointed as the new director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad.