Dataset Information

The Genome of the North American Brown Bear or Grizzly: Ursus arctos ssp. horribilis.

ABSTRACT: The grizzly bear (Ursus arctos ssp. horribilis) represents the largest population of brown bears in North America. Its genome was sequenced using a microfluidic partitioning library construction technique, and these data were supplemented with sequencing from a nanopore-based long read platform. The final assembly was 2.33 Gb with a scaffold N50 of 36.7 Mb, and the genome is of comparable size to that of its close relative the polar bear (2.30 Gb). An analysis using 4104 highly conserved mammalian genes indicated that 96.1% were found to be complete within the assembly. An automated annotation of the genome identified 19,848 protein coding genes. Our study shows that the combination of the two sequencing modalities that we used is sufficient for the construction of highly contiguous reference quality mammalian genomes. The assembled genome sequence and the supporting raw sequence reads are available from the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) under the bioproject identifier PRJNA493656, and the assembly described in this paper is version QXTK01000000.

SUBMITTER: Taylor GA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6315469 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

The Genome of the North American Brown Bear or Grizzly: Ursus arctos ssp. horribilis.

Taylor Gregory A GA Kirk Heather H Coombe Lauren L Jackman Shaun D SD Chu Justin J Tse Kane K Cheng Dean D Chuah Eric E Pandoh Pawan P Carlsen Rebecca R Zhao Yongjun Y Mungall Andrew J AJ Moore Richard R Birol Inanc I Franke Maria M Marra Marco A MA Dutton Christopher C Jones Steven J M SJM

Genes 20181130 12

The grizzly bear (<i>Ursus arctos</i> ssp. <i>horribilis</i>) represents the largest population of brown bears in North America. Its genome was sequenced using a microfluidic partitioning library construction technique, and these data were supplemented with sequencing from a nanopore-based long read platform. The final assembly was 2.33 Gb with a scaffold N50 of 36.7 Mb, and the genome is of comparable size to that of its close relative the polar bear (2.30 Gb). An analysis using 4104 highly con ...[more]

PMID: 30513700

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Project description:Wild animal populations experience selection pressures from both natural and anthropogenic sources. The availability of extensive pedigrees is increasing along with our ability to quantify the heritability and evolvability of phenotypic traits and thus the speed and potential for evolutionary change in wild populations. The environment may also affect gene expressions in individuals, which may in turn affect the potential of phenotypic traits to respond to selection. Knowledge about the relationship between the genetic and environmental components of phenotypic variation is particularly relevant, given ongoing anthropogenically driven global change. Using a quantitative genetic mixed model, we disentangled the genetic and environmental components of phenotypic variance in a large carnivore, the brown bear (Ursus arctos). We combined a pedigree covering ~1,500 individual bears over seven generations with location data from 413 bears, as well as data on bear density, habitat characteristics, and climatic conditions. We found a narrow-sense heritability of 0.24 (95% CrI: 0.06-0.38) for brown bear head size, showing that the trait can respond to selection at a moderate speed. The environment contributed substantially to phenotypic variation, and we partitioned this into birth year (5.9%), nonadditive among-individual genetic (15.0%), and residual (50.4%) environmental effects. Brown bear head circumference showed an evolvability of 0.2%, which can generate large changes in the trait mean over some hundreds of generations. Our study is among the first to quantify heritability of a trait in a hunted large carnivore population. Such knowledge about the degree to which species experiencing hunting can respond to selection is crucial for conservation and to make informed management decisions. We show that including important environmental variables when analyzing heritability is key to understanding the dynamics of the evolutionary potential of phenotypic traits.

Dataset Information

The Genome of the North American Brown Bear or Grizzly: Ursus arctos ssp. horribilis.

Publications

The Genome of the North American Brown Bear or Grizzly: Ursus arctos ssp. horribilis.

Similar Datasets

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