The llama (Lama glama) is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since the Pre-Columbian era.
Today, we release the chromosome-length assembly for the llama named Fiesta, living at the Houston Zoo. Fiesta is pretty famous! Check out this viral video of her enjoying the leaf blower. This is a $1K short-read assembly.
This is the third camelid in our collection, the other two being the dromedary and the alpaca, both upgrades from previously available genomes. Check the whole-genome alignments below: looks like the camel karyotype has been very stable over the last 45MY or so!
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/2b9330_de219ea4ed2148ecafdd053895520a80~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_147,h_76,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/2b9330_de219ea4ed2148ecafdd053895520a80~mv2.jpg)