Project Number: 3625-32000-111-01
Project Type: Nonfunded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jul 13, 2011
End Date: Jan 31, 2013

Objective:
The objective of this cooperative research project is to produce a high quality draft, annotated genome sequence for the American plains bison (Bison bison) that will facilitate comparative studies on genomic variability in bison and allow comparisons to genomes of other ruminant and non-ruminant species.

Approach:
Liver and other tissues will be obtained from 5 to 10 bison bulls that exit Yellowstone National Park. DNA samples from the bulls will be screened at our collaborator's laboratory at Texas A&M for any evidence of cattle genes and with microsatellite assays to select the single animal for sequencing that is most representative of the Yellowstone herd. Previous work by our collaborator has not found any evidence of cattle genes in bison from the Yellowstone herd. DNA will be extracted from hepatic tissue and used to prepare libraries for: 1) unmated shotgun reads on the 454 sequencer to 3-4X coverage; 2) a 20kB library for mated pair reads on the 454 sequencer to 1 X coverage, 3) a 3kB mated pair library for 1X coverage on the 454 sequencer; and 4) a library for short reads on the Illumina Hi-seek to achieve 25-30X coverage. Commercially available kits for the two sequencers will be obtained and procedures will be in accordance with manufacturer’s recommendations. The sequence data will be assembled using the cattle genome as a scaffold.