Preliminary Population Structure Analysis Using Whole Genome and Genotyping-by-Sequencing Data of Dromedary Camels

The domestic dromedary camel is of economic and cultural importance in many countries in north Africa, the Middle East, and in parts of Asia. With a global population estimate of over fifteen million, many in developing nations, camels are often selected for meat and milk production, draught, riding, and racing traits. Camels possess an array of unique physiological adaptations that have enabled their survival in the arid desert environment. Assembled using only Illumina reads, the currently available reference genome contains 32,572 scaffolds with a N50 of 4.2Mb. We plan to produce a more robust set of genomic resources that will facilitate genomic selection and the study of desert adaptation in mammals using a comparative genomic approach. Genetic diversity and population dynamics will be assessed by genotyping camels from unique subpopulations. In a preliminary sample set, we collected whole blood samples from dromedary camels located in the US and Qatar. We performed whole genome sequencing on nine camels (four US and five Qatari) and genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) on twenty-four Qatari racing camels. Preliminary analysis of the GBS reads identified 310,311 SNPs prior to filtering. Variants will be called separately on both data sets, then filtered to those detected by both technologies for further analysis. Here we present genetic diversity metrics assessed with standard population genetic pipelines. Analysis of the sequencing data is currently ongoing.