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Introduction to the fathead minnow genome browser and opportunities for collaborative development
Citation:
Saari, T., A. Schroeder, G. Ankley, AND Dan Villeneuve. Introduction to the fathead minnow genome browser and opportunities for collaborative development. EU SETAC, Brussels, BELGIUM, May 07 - 11, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) is a laboratory model organism widely used in regulatory toxicity testing and ecotoxicology research. Despite, the wealth of toxicological data for this organism, until recently genome scale information was lacking for the species, which limited the utility of the species for pathway-based toxicity testing and research. As part of a EPA Pathfinder Innovation Project, next generation sequencing was applied to generate a draft genome assembly, which was published in 2016. However, application of those genome-scale sequencing resources was still limited by the lack of available gene annotations for fathead minnow. Here we report on development of a first generation genome annotation for fathead minnow and the dissemination of that information through a web-based browser that makes it easy to search for genes of interest, extract the corresponding sequence, identify intron and exon boundaries and regulatory regions, and align the computationally predicted genes with other supporting evidence. This work greatly enhances the utility of the genome assemblies that were developed and makes it accessible to the ecotoxicology community world-wide, opening up a wide array of new research opportunities with the species. Products of this research have already been applied to support on-going research efforts within the Chemical Safety for Sustainability Program.
Description:
Ab initio gene prediction and evidence alignment were used to produce the first annotations for the fathead minnow SOAPdenovo genome assembly. Additionally, a genome browser hosted at genome.setac.org provides simplified access to the annotation data in context with fathead minnow genomic sequence. This work is meant to extend the utility of fathead minnow genome as a resource and enable the continued development of this species as a model organism.