#35 · Genomics

Chromosome-scale diploid and cetacean genomes extend assembly to new taxa

The dominant thread is chromosome-scale genome construction in eukaryotes. The franciscana dolphin assembly reports 3.13 Gb across 22 chromosomes, with scaffold N50 of 111.18 Mb and BUSCO completeness of 99.42%, extending chromosome-level references to an endangered cetacean. The prairie and meadow vole study uses a single-library PacBio HiFi and CiFi approach to produce chromosome-scale diploid assemblies that reveal Y divergence and a prairie-vole Avpr1a duplication. The king scallop study and the olfactory receptor framework instead apply genomic data to population questions: 15 chromosomal inversions underlie localised differentiation among 168 sequenced individuals, and a duplication-to-loss ratio flags historical bottlenecks across felids and ursids. What is new is the taxonomic breadth of chromosome-scale diploid and cetacean references and the use of gene-family evolution metrics to read demographic history from genomic data.