About the Project
The HGSC is sequencing the genome of the rock hyrax, Procavia capensis.
The hyrax is a small land mammal from Africa. Although the hyrax resembles a rodent, it is related to the elephant, and its genomic sequence can be compared to that of the African Savannah elephant which has just been sequenced to 2x coverage.
The hyrax is one of 24 animals whose genome will be sequenced to 2x coverage as part of the comparative genomic annotation effort which seeks to identify functional elements that are conserved.
Frozen kidney tissue from a female rock hyrax named Rosie, who died of old age, was kindly provided by Drs. Tom Alvarado and Jeanette Boylan at the Dallas Zoo. Sequencing for the project is currently underway.
There have been reported cases of pancreatic islet fibrosis/diabetes mellitus in several adult hyraxes at different zoological parks and the sequence information would be useful in understanding the etiology of the disease.
The sequencing and comparative analysis is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
Access to the Data
All sequence reads are deposited in the NCBI trace archive as they are produced. Assemblies of contigs and scaffolds, as well as Blast access to the data will be made available here and at the relevant public databases as soon as they are produced.
Resources
Photo from Wikipedia Commons