Genetic Signatures of Climate Change: The Alpine Marmot Genome

Alpine marmots are descendants of pleistocene rodents, who failed to re-adapt to warm climates. This restricted their existence to a few ecological niches, such as high-altitude mountain regions in the central Alps. Marmots are social and largely monogamic animals that have been genetically isolated for > 20,000 years, manage to survive with 1.2 kg body fat for 8 months, and have interesting features to adapt their body temperature. We have recently sequenced the genome of a male alpine marmot to >30X non-duplicate read coverage by Illumina short read sequencing and 1-2X long reads by 454 sequencing and three females from the same population to >60X coverage by short read sequencing. The analysis of the genome is underway. The gene models were predicted for the marmot, integrating the RNA-Seq data. The draft annotation consists of 23,159 genes. The analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms showed that alpine marmots are extremely homozygous and suggests strong inbreeding as consequence of climate-induced isolation of a mammal.