Korean scientists have 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 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 per cent 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 per cent novel SNP candidates and 28 per cent identical polymorphisms compared to NCBI's dbSNP,' said Prof Jong-Joo Kim at Yeungnam University.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies were used to sequence the genome.
Assembly of the high-throughput sequencing data played a role in ensuring that the analysis could be finished on schedule.
The complete analysis software was provided by CLC Bio.
'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, Suwon, the Republic of Korea.
The draft genome and the SNPs from this project will be published in a scientific journal and online.
