Korean "Hanwoo" Bovine Genome And Whole Snps Announced
Suwon, the Republic of Korea -- January 28, 2010 -- Today Korean scientists announced the completion of the de novo
assembly and analysis of the genome of the native Korean bovine, called Hanwoo. The analysis also includes SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), which shed light on both the genetic differences
between cattle races and the systemic breeding of the Hanwoo.
The Hanwoo is the third bovine genome to be finished in the world and it covers 92% of the reference genome sequence.
The Korean scientists state that a comparison of the Hanwoo with the reference bovine genome stored in the NCBI database
reveals key secrets about Hanwoo-specific development, diseases and evolution.
"The Hanwoo genome has 72% novel SNP candidates and 28% identical polymorphisms compared to NCBI’s dbSNP" said Dr. Jong-Joo Kim, professor at Yeungnam University.
This project has been a collaboration between Yeungnam University, Chungbuk National University, and Insilicogen. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies were used to sequence the genome. Assembly of the high-throughput sequencing data played an
important role in ensuring that the analysis could be finished on schedule. The complete analysis software was provided
by CLC bio, Aarhus, Denmark.
"CLC bio's software, CLC NGS Cell and CLC Genomics Workbench, gave us a remarkable productivity so that the overall
analyses for more than 628 million reads and 49 Giga base-pairs could be completed within a month on a standard computer" said Dr. Jun-Hyung Park, a manager of Insilicogen, Inc., Suwon, the Republic of Korea.
The draft genome and the SNPs from this project will be published in both a scientific journal and online. The knowledge
obtained will be applied, among others, in disease control, breeding of economic phenotypes, and diagnosis of bovine
breeds.
ENDS