Reference Genome Project
A long standing objective for ISGC was the creation of a reference sheep genome sequence. The consortium agreed to commence work on the project in January 2009. The data generation phase commenced in late 2009.To inform the genomics community about how the project was proceeding, the consortium published a "marker paper" which set out the strategy for sequencing, assembly and pre-publication data access. The paper was published in Animal Genetics .
In June 2014 the fully annotated genome sequence assembly was published in Science. The links below allow you to access reprints of the Science paper.
Work is continuing to improve the current assembly and its annotation and several additional assemblies have been completed or are in progress. The latest assembly ARS-UI_Ramb_v2.0 has been recently published Davenport et al An improved ovine reference genome assembly to facilitate in-depth functional annotation of the sheep genome GigaScience, Volume 11, 2022, giab096 link In addition other projects are underway including mapping the genetic diversity and functional annotation.