Taeniopygia guttata (zebra finch) genome, bTaeGut1, alternate haplotype. Taeniopygia guttata

The zebra finch is one of the most studied birds in science, for its vocal learning abilities and as a representation of songbirds. It is native to Australia. This assembly has been produced as part of the G10K-VGP Project, avian B10K Project, and a consortium of songbird neurobiology researchers involved in generating the original reference genome. DNA was collected from an inbred male in a laboratory colony Art Arnold at UCLA. The samples were prepared in the lab of Erich Jarvis, and sequencing was conducted at Pacific Biosciences, Bionano Genomics, 10X Genomics, Arima Genomics for HiC, and the Rockefeller University Vertebrate Genomes Lab. Genome assembly was conducted by the G10K-VGP group, specifically by Arang Rhie and Sergey Koren of Adam Phillippy's lab at NIH. Manual curation of chromosomes and other genomic features was conducted by the gEVAL group led by Kerstin Howe at the Sanger Institute, Harris Lewin and Joanna Damas at UC Davis, and the Phillippy Lab. The primary haplotype contains the longest contigs of the Pacbio FALCON unzip assembly, scaffolded with 10X linked reads, Bionano optical maps, and Arima HiC reads, with multiple tools to further separate out haplotypes. Funding was from the different companies the paid for sequencing, HHMI to Jarvis, and individual grants and awards to the persons listed above. Released from embargo April 29, 2021 in Rhie et al Nature. 2021 7856:737-746.