About the Project
The HGSC is sequencing the genome of the white-tufted-ear Marmoset (Callithrix jacchus). The marmoset is a New World Monkey, estimated to have diverged from the anthropoid common ancestor 35 to 40 million years ago. The marmoset is a model for the study of drug sensitivity, brain function, immunity and autoimmune disease.
The Marmoset Genome Sequencing Consortium is a collaboration between the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center and the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University, St. Louis. The goal of the project is to produce a seven-fold WGS shotgun assembly from clones of different sizes, including small insert plasmids, BACs, and fosmids. There will be finishing and BAC sequencing components of the project to investigate interesting regions for human diseases and to highlight primate evolution.
The marmoset project was proposed in October 2004 in a white paper to the NHGRI. The marmoset is studied in multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease and is important for infectious disease and pharmacology research. As a new world monkey, its position in the evolutionary tree is well suited to serve as reference for other primate genomes. This project mirrors the orangutan with an even division of effort between HGSC and Wash U GSC. Assembly and analysis of marmoset will occur concurrently with orangutan.
The sequencing and comparative analysis is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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
Callithrix jacchus White Paper
Primate BAC Library Resource Proposal
BAC resources - Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute
Taxonomy browser summary of data at NCBI
Photo courtesy of Raimond Spekking, Wikimedia Commons