Draft Genome of the North American Beaver (Castor canadensis).

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis) is a keystone species of Northwest riparian ecosystems. Beavers thrive in a wide range of wetlands habitats due to their variety of unique behavioral, musculoskeletal, metabolic, and dietary adaptations. With their dam-building behavior beavers contribute to species and habitat diversity. The beaver is a symbol of the industrious and pioneering spirit of Pacific Northwesterners and is the Oregon state animal and as the mascot of Oregon State University (OSU).

Genetic studies of wild beaver populations and efforts to understand its biological adaptations are hampered by the lack of a beaver genome. The OSU Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing (CGRB) has crowd-funded $30,000 to sequence and annotate the beaver genome, to obtain a tissue transcriptome atlas, and to profile the gut microbiome.

Using Illumina sequencing we have assembled a 4 Gb beaver genome (N50 300Kb). We have completed a 17 tissue composite transcriptome assembly. We will present results of repeat element identification, gene prediction, gene annotation, non-coding RNAs, and orthology. Phylogenetic analysis of an alignment of whole-genome orthologous proteins from 19 species shows that beaver is found in the rodent group alongside kangaroo rat. Shotgun metagenomes from beaver stool samples were functionally annotated to profile the metabolic capacity of the gut microbiome.

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