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An important phase of an international project to map the sheep
genome has taken a big step forward, Meat & Wool New Zealand, AgResearch and Ovita have announced.
Following completion of the sequencing of the sheep genome to
three-fold coverage, the first assembly of a draft sequence of the
sheep genome has now been achieved. When fully completed, the entire
project will provide significant benefits for both farmers and human
health researchers.
Meat & Wool New Zealand research and development Manager Max Kennedy says the
initial assembly of the interim low coverage sequence of the sheep
genome is one step towards identifying DNA variants and also allows
scientists to use the sheep genome sequence directly for the first
time.
“This will enable researchers to accurately position DNA variants on
the genome. The identification of these variants is the primary goal of
the next phase of the project.”
When the project is complete, it will allow the development of tools
to help farmers identify genes associated with important production,
quality and disease traits in sheep, he says.
AgResearch Senior Scientist, John McEwan said the project has
generated more than 9.7 billion bases (9.7 Giga bases) of sequence
from six sheep. While modest by world standards, this is by far the
largest sequence assembly project attempted in Australia and New
Zealand.
The assembly has been created by New Zealand and Australian
researchers who are part of the International Sheep Genomics Consortium
(ISGC). The ISGC is a collaboration between scientists (and their
organisations) from 16 countries including Australia, New Zealand, the
United States, and United Kingdom that contributed to the current work.
The purpose of the Consortium is to develop genomic resources in the
public domain.
The skim
sequencing of the genome has been completed in only seven months and
utilised the latest “next generation” sequencing methods. It was
conducted simultaneously at Otago University in Dunedin and at the
Human Genome Sequencing Centre at the Baylor College of Medicine,
Houston, Texas.
By late 2009 the researchers hope to have mapped production traits
to specific regions of the genome. In turn this knowledge will be used
commercially to select better animals.
In the current project AgResearch staff have been involved in
sequencing strategy simulations, have undertaken a major part of the
sequencing using the Otago facility, have developed a database to store
all the sequences collected and are undertaking sequence assembly and
subsequent SNP detection in conjunction with Australian researchers.
The New Zealand work is part of Meat & Wool New Zealand and
AgResearch’s Ovita Investment. The sequencing by Baylor and the
Australian contribution to the assembly were financed by CSIRO, an
Australian Government International Science Linkages Grant, Sheep
Genomics (Meat and Livestock Australia and Australian Wool Innovation
Ltd) and the University of Sydney with additional support for
sequencing by Genesis Faraday from the United Kingdom.
The sequence will be used by all sheep researchers. As the sheep is
used widely as a human medical model for a number of diseases such as
osteoporosis, the flow-on effects of this research should have
considerable benefits in the area of human health as well.
Editor's Note:
Original news release can be found here.
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