top of page

Gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus)

Gray whales have the longest annual migration of any mammal, making 10,000-12,000 mile round trips around the North Pacific Ocean. Read more about gray whales on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website.

africa-animal-big-cat-88234.jpg

Gray Whale Breaching by Eric Neitzel,[CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via flickr.com

Chromosome-length genome assembly

Download the Eschrichtius_robustus_HiC.fasta.gz file containing the chromosome-length (2n=44) assembly of the gray whale genome. All modifications with respect to the draft (see below) are annotated in the Eschrichtius_robustus_HiC.assembly file. Some basic stats associated with the new reference, Eschrichtius_robustus_HiC, are listed below. The full data release can be explored here.

Contig length (bp)
Number of contigs
Contig N50 (bp)
Longest contig (bp)
2,333,417,879
164,433
67,147
555,727
Scaffold length (bp)
Number of scaffolds
Scaffold N50 (bp)
Longest scaffold (bp)
2,348,811,279
119,935
103,007,579
172,183,005
Draft

The chromosome-length genome assembly is based on the draft assembly Eschrichtius_robustus, credited below.

The draft assembly was generated by the DNA Zoo team from short insert-size PCR-free DNA-Seq data using w2rap-contigger (Clavijo et al. 2017), see (Dudchenko et al., 2018) for details. Work was performed under Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program (MMHSRP) Permit No. 18786-03 issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA). The specimen used in this study was collected by Pam Tuomi (Alaska Sealife Center) from Girdwood, Alaska and provided by the National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank, which is maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the NIST Biorepository, and which is operated under the direction of NMFS with the collaboration of USGS, USFWS, MMS, and NIST through the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program and the Alaska Marine Mammal Tissue Archival Project.

Method

3D Assembly was performed using 3D-DNA pipeline (Dudchenko et al., Science, 2017). The genome was reviewed using Juicebox Assembly Tools  (Dudchenko et al., bioRxiv, 2018). See Methods for more information.

Hi-C sample

The kidney sample for in situ Hi-C preparation was donated by a female individual, and obtained from National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the NIST Biorepository.

Hi-C Contact maps

Hi-C data was aligned to the draft reference using Juicer (Durand, Shamim et al., Cell Systems, 2016), and contact maps visualizing the alignments with respect to the draft and the new reference were built using 3D-DNA (Dudchenko et al., Science, 2017). The contact maps can be explored below via Juicebox.js interactive tool (Robinson et al., Cell Systems, 2018). (Please note that the interactive figures are scaled 1:2.) To explore the assembly in greater detail, please download the .hic and .assembly files from the data release folder and use Juicebox Assembly Tools  (Dudchenko et al., bioRxiv, 2018).

References

If you use this genome assembly in your research, please check that the conditions of use associated with the draft permit it, and acknowledge the following work.

The draft assembly was generated by the DNA Zoo team from short insert-size PCR-free DNA-Seq data using w2rap-contigger (Clavijo et al. 2017), see (Dudchenko et al., 2018) for details. Work was performed under Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program (MMHSRP) Permit No. 18786-03 issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA). The specimen used in this study was collected by Pam Tuomi (Alaska Sealife Center) from Girdwood, Alaska and provided by the National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank, which is maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the NIST Biorepository, and which is operated under the direction of NMFS with the collaboration of USGS, USFWS, MMS, and NIST through the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program and the Alaska Marine Mammal Tissue Archival Project.

Dudchenko, O., Batra, S.S., Omer, A.D., Nyquist, S.K., Hoeger, M., Durand, N.C., Shamim, M.S., Machol, I., Lander, E.S., Aiden, A.P., Aiden, E.L., 2017. De novo assembly of the Aedes aegypti genome using Hi-C yields chromosome-length scaffolds. Science 356, 92–95. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal3327.

Dudchenko, O., Shamim, M.S., Batra, S., Durand, N.C., Musial, N.T., Mostofa, R., Pham, M., Hilaire, B.G.S., Yao, W., Stamenova, E., Hoeger, M., Nyquist, S.K., Korchina, V., Pletch, K., Flanagan, J.P., Tomaszewicz, A., McAloose, D., Estrada, C.P., Novak, B.J., Omer, A.D., Aiden, E.L., 2018. The Juicebox Assembly Tools module facilitates de novo assembly of mammalian genomes with chromosome-length scaffolds for under $1000. bioRxiv 254797. https://doi.org/10.1101/254797.

Disclaimer

This is a work in progress. If you notice any discrepancies in the map or have data that confirms or contradicts the suggested reference, please email us at thednazoo@gmail.com or leave a comment on the Forum.

bottom of page