Genome of Cynomolgus monkey Macaca fascicularis

The cynomolgus macaque (Macaca fascicularis) is the most important non-human primate (NHP) animal model in basic and applied biomedical research. The close evolutionary relationship of macaques and humans is likely to produce more comparable pharmacological responses than other more distantly related organisms. To improve the predictive power of primate experiments for humans, we determined the genome sequence of a Macaca fascicularis female of Mauritius origin using a whole-genome shotgun sequencing approach. We applied a template switch strategy (TSS) which employs either the human or the rhesus genome in assembling the individual sequence reads. The relatively high sequence coverage (6-fold) enabled discovery of about 2 million potential single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) based on balanced occurrence of a dimorphic residue at a given position in the genome sequence. Knowledge of the M. fascicularis draft genome is an important contribution to both the use of this animal in disease models and safety assessment of potential drug products. In particular, this information allows high-resolution genotyping and animal stratification thereby allowing the use of well characterized animals, which is likely to reduce experimental variability with concomitant improvement of data quality.