About the Project
The HGSC is sequencing the genome of the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus). This primate model organism is more distant from humans than chimpanzees but closer than the rhesus monkey, making it important for the study of human biology.
The Orangutan Genome Sequencing Consortium is led by the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University, St. Louis. The goals of the project are to produce a seven-fold WGS shotgun assembly, using a combination of small insert plasmids and large insert clone ends.
The decision to sequence the Sumatran orangutan was announced in August 2004, following working group discussions about the general future of primate sequencing and the need for additional outgroups beyond rhesus to anchor chimp-human differences. The agreed plan was for a "rhesus-like" project, i.e., deep coverage (~6X) and BACs as required to ensure high quality assembly to resolve the genome areas that are both particularly interesting and particularly difficult to assemble. Orangutan is the only mammalian genome for deep-draft sequencing without its own white paper. The 27 million reads in the NCBI Trace Archive were produced as an even division of efforts between the HGSC and the Wash U GSC.
The sequencing and comparative analysis is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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