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Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)

Males humpback whales produce a complex song lasting 10 to 20 minutes, which they repeat for hours at a time. All the males in a group will produce the same song, which is different each season. Read more about humpback whales on the Animal diversity web (ADW) website.

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Humpback whale wild head photo Copr. Bill Hunnewell

Chromosome-length genome assembly

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

Contig length (bp)
Number of contigs
Contig N50 (bp)
Longest contig (bp)
2,523,784,302
763,535
55,713
743,968
Scaffold length (bp)
Number of scaffolds
Scaffold N50 (bp)
Longest scaffold (bp)
2,540,677,902
719,891
94,294,397
166,099,560
Draft

The chromosome-length genome assembly is based on the draft assembly Megaptera_novaeangliae, 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.

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 skin sample for in situ Hi-C preparation was donated by a female individual, and obtained from Barbie Halaska (The Marine Mammal Center).

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.

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.

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