Rudimentary Genomic Reference for the Grizzly Bear Derived Using Short Read Data from Several Animals

Next generation Sequencing (NGS) has made it possible to inexpensively generate large scale sequence data. This provides a wide insight to the genome of an organism regardless of the available genomic data. The aim of our study is to provide a rudimentary genome assembly for the Grizzy bear (Ursus arctos ssp.) which is also called North American brown bear. They are known as keystone species which play an important role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem. However, they are in the list of threatened species.

There has been an attempt in literature on assembling Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) genome. But this sequence is not suitable as a reference for the Grizzly because the Polar bear differs from Grizzly bear in morphology, physiology and behavioral characteristics. Our objective is to build useful contigs for this species. Grizzly bear karyotype contains 36 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes. They have a genome of 2.5 billion bases. Two males from Idaho research and one female from the wild were sequenced using NextSeq500. Several short read assemblers will be used and challenged by both the heterozygosity of the samples, as well as the higher error rate of the NextSeq500.

This first attempt in assembling Grizzly bear genome will be useful in certain ways in studying their muscle function and lactation during hibernation. Identification of genes responsible for environmental adaptation will eventually help in conservation.