The Ensembl Pre! site has been updated for five species: vervet monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus), naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), aardvark (Orycteropus afer), bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the American pika (Ochotona princeps).

Vervet monkey, naked mole-rat and aardvark are new species to Ensembl. Our main site already displays earlier, low-coverage assemblies for dolphin and pika.

New species

Vervet monkey

This species is an important non-human primate model for biomedical research into HIV and heritable behavioural phenotypes. The assembly, Chlorocebus_sabeus 1.0 (GCA_000409795.1), was submitted by the Vervet Genomics Consortium and became available in June 2013. It comprises 31 chromosomes and 1432 unplaced scaffolds. The vervet monkey Pre! pages display alignments of UniProt proteins, and human Ensembl translations.

Naked mole-rat

These unique rodents can live for longer than 28 years in captivity and are a model for age-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Unlike other mammals, naked mole-rats are virtually poikilothermic. They live underground in cooperative colonies where only one queen and several males are reproductively active. The assembly, HetGla_female_1.0 (GCA_000247695.1), was submitted by the Broad Institute and became available in March 2012. It comprises 4229 toplevel sequences, all of which are unplaced scaffolds. The naked mole-rat Pre! pages display alignments of UniProt proteins, and human and mouse Ensembl translations.

Aardvark

The genome has been sequenced in the first phase of a project aiming to identify constrained regions in the human genome by comparing the genomes of ~200 mammals. The assembly, OryAfe1.0 (GCA_000298275.1), was submitted by the Broad Institute and became available in October 2012. It comprises 22508 toplevel sequences, all of which are unplaced scaffolds. The aardvark Pre! pages display alignments of UniProt proteins, human Ensembl translations, and 79 aardvark proteins.

New assemblies

Dolphin

The new assembly, Tru_1.4 (GCA_000151865.2), was submitted by Baylor College of Medicine and became publicly available in January 2012. The dolphin assembly comprises 240900 toplevel sequences, all of which are unplaced scaffolds. The dolphin Pre! pages display alignments of dolphin proteins and cDNAs, UniProt proteins, and human Ensembl translations.

Pika

The new assembly for pika, OchPri3.0 (GCA_000292845.1), was submitted by the Broad Institute and became publicly available in August 2012. The pika assembly comprises 10421 toplevel sequences, all of which are unplaced scaffolds. The pika Pre! pages display alignments of UniProt proteins, and mouse and human Ensembl translations.