‘Alalā genome is one of the best!!

Post date: Jan 13, 2016 7:52:16 PM

The results of our assembled ‘alalā genome were presented for the first time at the Plant and Animal Genome (PAG) conference in San Diego this week. Jill Muehling (Pacific Biosciences) presented the poster below, and Oliver Ryder (San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research) presented our talk: "Conservation genomics of a critically endangered Hawaiian bird: A high quality genome assembly of the ‘‘alalā will assist in population management and reintroduction".

We were already incredibly pleased with the assembly, which was completed on December 8th, 2015, and it is now clear that we have one of the best avian genome assemblies currently in existence! This particular ‘alalā genome was generated from Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing by Pacific Biosciences, and assembled by their highly skilled team of bioinformaticians. During the conference, Erich Jarvis of Duke University discussed our fantastic assembly results, which include a very large (11Mb) N50 contig length!

During his talk, Oliver Ryder discussed how having a high quality genome assembly will aid conservation management of the ‘alalā. He noted that the candidate genes we are targeting for downstream population genetics research are fully captured in the assembly, and how this compares to genome assemblies for related species.