What is it about?
The work aimed at disovering genomic regions and variations that are specific to a breed or shared between the breeds for horses included in the study. The whole genome of these horses contains a huge volume of information as the genome of a horse can be a 100 GB file when zipped!. We used special bioinformatic tools to discover the variations between the genomes of the horses included in the study and found some interesting genetic alterations specific to some of those breeds which we believe serve functional adpatation.
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Photo by Lucia Macedo on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This was one of the very first studies in the analysis of whole genomes of horses. The work laid the foundations for future studies that wanted to check on genomic regions of interest and compare what they obtained with our findings. We provided links to browse through the genetic variations of these horses. These links with tracks that can be easily added to genome browsers and the user can browse at ease. In addition, we functionally annotated the genetic variations so that the user can see if they have a biological effect on the horses or not.
Perspectives
Personally, this research grew my bioinformatic skills largly and helped me develop many programming skills. I learned much from interacting with my peers who work on equine genetics during the project and now have the willingness to do a bigger project on horses or other animals.
Mohammed Al Abri
Sultan Qaboos University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Whole genome detection of sequence and structural polymorphism in six diverse horses, PLoS ONE, April 2020, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230899.
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