Amanda Warr: The MinION menagerie: applications of nanopore sequencing for animal health and welfare

Animal health and welfare are major concerns both for livestock and companion animals. The productivity of livestock relies heavily on the condition of the animal, and anything affecting animal health can be expensive for farmers. Similarly, ill health in companion animals can be costly and distressing to pet owners. The health of animals can be negatively impacted by variations in their genomes and through microbial activity. This talk will explore the variety of applications for nanopore sequencing to better understand animal health, and the specific benefits of this technology for these purposes. Applications include diagnosis and anti-microbial profiling of infections in dogs, assembly of whole genomes from rumen microbiome samples in cattle, investigation of a genomic region associated with respiratory distress in dogs, and ultra-long read sequencing for the assembly of a wild suid genome to better understand response to local disease challenges in pigs in Africa.