The Genome of the Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucas)

• Published in: Genes
• Main Authors: Jones, Steven J. M., Taylor, Gregory A., Chan, Simon, Warren, René L., Hammond, S. Austin, Bilobram, Steven, Mordecai, Gideon, Suttle, Curtis A., Miller, Kristina M., Schulze, Angela, Chan, Amy M., Jones, Samantha J., Tse, Kane, Li, Irene, Cheung, Dorothy, Mungall, Karen L., Choo, Caleb, Ally, Adrian, Dhalla, Noreen, Tam, Angela K. Y., Troussard, Armelle, Kirk, Heather, Pandoh, Pawan, Paulino, Daniel, Coope, Robin J. N., Mungall, Andrew J., Moore, Richard, Zhao, Yongjun, Birol, Inanc, Ma, Yussanne, Marra, Marco, Haulena, Martin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2017
• Subjects: Genome; Genome assembly; Beluga whale; Delphinapterus leucas; Cetacea; Arctic; Beluga; Beluga*; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/70896; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes8120378

The beluga whale is a cetacean that inhabits arctic and subarctic regions, and is the only living member of the genus Delphinapterus. The genome of the beluga whale was determined using DNA sequencing approaches that employed both microfluidic partitioning library and non-partitioned library construction. The former allowed for the construction of a highly contiguous assembly with a scaffold N50 length of over 19 Mbp and total reconstruction of 2.32 Gbp. To aid our understanding of the functional elements, transcriptome data was also derived from brain, duodenum, heart, lung, spleen, and liver tissue. Assembled sequence and all of the underlying sequence data are available at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under the Bioproject accession number PRJNA360851A. Medicine, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Non UBC Botany, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of Medical Genetics, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Oceans and Fisheries, Institute for the Reviewed Faculty