Urocitellus parryii (Arctic ground squirrel) genome, mUroPar1

The Arctic ground squirrel (Urocitellus parryii) is a species of ground squirrel native to the Arctic and Subarctic of North America and Asia. It can be found in regions of Northern Canada ranging from the Arctic Circle to northern British Columbia, and down to the southern border of the Northwest Territories, as well as Alaska and Siberia (from Wikipedia entry). The sample was procured from the Pump Station No. 4 area of Northern Alaska by Vadim Fedorov and Anya Goropashnaya of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and coordinated by Trygve Bakken, Ed Lein, and Rebecca Hodge at the Allen Institute for Brain Science to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Erich D. Jarvis, Giulio Formenti, and Jennifer Balacco.