A near finished reference genome for Tibetan yak. Bos grunniens

Modern agricultural research is reliant upon high-resolution reference genomes of species of interest for accelerated breeding. However, complexity of eukaryotic genomes, limitations of technologies and lack of physical maps slacken generation of reference genomes. State-of-the-art technologies are bridging this gap, one could use reference genomes of closely related species to build a reference genome from draft assemblies. Here, we present our effort in attaining a chromosomal level assembly for Tibetan yak using a publicly available draft genome and the reference genome of cattle. The draft assembly of yak was super scaffolded using simulated mate pair libraries from the cattle reference. Pseudo molecules are assembled by anchoring the super scaffolds of yak onto cattle chromosomes using synteny between the species. Ninety-five percent of the super scaffolds could be assembled to build 30 pseudo molecules representing the 30 near-complete yak chromosomes. Majority of yak chromosomes are more than 90% complete. We believe that this resource will be useful in comparative genomics, evolutionary studies and breeding programs.