Abstract
Mouflon (Ovis orientalis) with its huge and beautiful horns is considered as one of the ancestors of domesticated sheep. The European mouflon (Ovis orientalis musimon) is in the Asiatic mouflon (O. orientalis) clade. In order to provide novel genome information for mouflon, moreover promote genetic analysis of genus Ovis both domestic and wild, we propose to sequence the mouflon genome. We assembled the highly heterozygous mouflon genome based on Illumina HiSeq platform using the next-generation sequencing technology. Finally, the draft genome we accessed approximately 2.69 Gb (42.15% GC), while N50 sizes of contig and scaffold are 110.1 kb and 10.4 Mb, respectively. The contiguity of this assembly is obviously better than earlier versions. Further analyses predicted 20,814 protein-coding genes in the mouflon genome and 12,390 shared gene families among bovine species. It is estimated that the divergence time between O. orientalis musimon and Ovis aries was 7.6 million years ago. The draft mouflon genome assembly will provide data support and theoretical basis for various investigations of the genus Ovis species in future.
Highlights
Mouflon (Ovis orientalis) is a subspecies of the wild sheep with beautiful curved horns and redbrown coat color (Macdonald, 2001)
The first peak indicated that the mouflon genome may have high heterozygosity
It’s very interesting that we found xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH) enriched in the Caffeine metabolism pathway is related to the milk production of sheep and goat, especially affecting the formation of Lipid droplets (SuárezVega et al, 2016; Toral et al, 2016)
Summary
Mouflon (Ovis orientalis) is a subspecies of the wild sheep with beautiful curved horns and redbrown coat color (Macdonald, 2001). The survival of wild mouflon is threatened by habitat loss as a result of land reclamation, deforestation, mining activities, and expansion of human settlements (Ptak et al, 2002). It is threatened by recreational hunters because of the highly prized horns (Garel et al, 2007). Interbreeding with domesticated sheep resulted in the decreased number of genetically pure mouflon in the wild. Due to these factors, certain wild populations of the mouflon are listed as vulnerable by IUCN. This study reports a draft genome assembly of mouflon, and it will lay the ground work for further gene function annotating of the mouflon genome and revealing its evolutionary status, and comparative genomics, as well as promote the conservation of the mouflon and the breeding of genus Ovis in the future
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