ABSTRACT
We report a high-quality draft sequence of the genome of the horse (Equus caballus). The genome is relatively repetitive but has little segmental duplication. Chromosomes appear to have undergone few historical rearrangements: 53% of equine chromosomes show conserved synteny to a single human chromosome. Equine chromosome 11 is shown to have an evolutionary new centromere devoid of centromeric satellite DNA, suggesting that centromeric function may arise before satellite repeat accumulation. Linkage disequilibrium, showing the influences of early domestication of large herds of female horses, is intermediate in length between dog and human, and there is long-range haplotype sharing among breeds.
Subject(s)
Chromosomes, Mammalian/genetics , Genome , Horses/genetics , Sequence Analysis, DNA , Animals , Animals, Domestic/genetics , Centromere/genetics , Chromosome Mapping , Computational Biology , DNA Copy Number Variations , Dogs , Evolution, Molecular , Female , Genes , Haplotypes , Humans , Molecular Sequence Data , Phylogeny , Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid , SyntenyABSTRACT
The generation of high-quality genome assemblies for numerous species is advancing at a rapid pace. As the number of genome assemblies increases, so does our ability to investigate genome relationships and their contributions to unraveling complex biological, evolutionary, and biomedical processes. A key process in the generation of a genome assembly is to determine and verify the precise physical location and order of the large sequence blocks (scaffolds) that result from the assembly. For organisms of relatively recent common ancestry this process may be achieved largely through comparative sequence alignment. However, as the evolutionary distance between species lengthens, the use of comparative sequence alignment becomes increasingly less reliable. Simultaneous cytogenetic mapping, using multicolor fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) analysis, offers an alternative means to define the cytogenetic location and relative order of DNA sequences, thereby anchoring the genome sequence to the karyotype. In this article we report the molecular cytogenetic locations of 415 bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones that served to anchor sequence scaffolds of the gray, short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) to its karyotype, which enabled accurate integration of these regions into the genome assembly.
Subject(s)
Chromosome Mapping/methods , Chromosomes, Artificial, Bacterial , Cytogenetics/methods , Monodelphis/genetics , Animals , Base Sequence , Genome/genetics , Genomics/methods , In Situ Hybridization, FluorescenceABSTRACT
The passage of cosmic rays has been observed to excite mechanical vibrations in the resonant gravitational wave detector NAUTILUS operating at temperature of 100 mK. A very significant correlation (more than 10 standard deviations) is found.
