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Amanda Warr

Going full circle: Assembly of high-quality, single-contig microbial genomes from the rumen microbiome using long-read sequencing

About Amanda Warr

Amanda Warr recently completed her PhD at The Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, UK. Her PhD research involved using genomics to investigate reproductive traits in pigs and reassembling the pig genome using long-read sequencing. Although this work was primarily in bioinformatics, she also spent time in the lab using the MinION and training others to use the sequencer. She has accumulated a number of MinION-related side projects and collaborations, including work in a variety of species on anti-microbial resistance, viral epidemiology, genome assembly in mammals and microbiomes, and diagnostics. Currently she is employed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Roslin Institute with Mick Watson and Christine Tait-Burkard, with main projects focussing on the rumen microbiome, functional genomics in chickens and tracking the spread of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus in the Philippines.

Abstract

Ruminants such as cows and sheep are important livestock species. They convert low nutritional value plant matter into high-quality meat and dairy products. Within a specialised stomach called the rumen, microbes ferment the plant matter producing short-chain fatty acids from difficult to digest plant matter. The composition of the rumen microbial community can affect the animal’s health, feed efficiency and level of methane production. Species in the rumen are typically difficult to culture and despite its importance, it remains an underexplored environment. DNA sequencing of the contents of the rumen offers the potential to identify microbial species without culture techniques. Here we sequence cow rumen fluid using Oxford Nanopore sequencing. We show that despite these data coming from a highly complex microbial sample we can assemble high-quality, single-contig whole genomes and plasmids of known and novel species, including numerous circular contigs. Additionally, we compare and validate the assemblies of these genomes with binned genomes generated from short read Illumina assemblies. We show that the long-read assembly out performs the short-read assembly in contiguity and in incorporation of important features such as AMR genes and marker genes..

Amanda Warr

Amanda Warr

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