On August 25th, the Dovetail Genomics Omni-C™ library preparation kits were delivered to the University of Trieste. Learning how to master this complex library preparation protocol, that requires a two-days workflow to be completed, will be of fundamental importance to further improve the quality of the draft genome assemblies obtained with PacBio reads.
Omni-C can be considered as a genome conformation mapping technology, as it allows the cross-linking of chromosomes in stabilized nucleosome scaffolds, obtaining paired sequencing reads representing very distant genomic regions, which are spatially-associated in chromatin loops. This strategy will hopefully provide a great resource for the scaffolding process, enabling the generation of chromosome-scale genome assemblies.
After some preliminary tests, we plan to apply this approach with the blood samples of the Marsican bear recently received from UniFi. Considering the high contiguity of the draft genome assembly obtained with PacBio reads, we are confident that the addition of the Omni-C libraries will allow to obtain a chromosome-scale assembly.
ENDEMIXIT 