Evolution and Development

Evolution is the change in heritable characteristics over successive generations. While Mendel and Darwin set the stage for modern evolutionary biology, rapid advances in sequencing and assembly technology are enabling the exploration of heritable traits at base-pair resolution. This places us at a historical inflexion point now that accurate reference genomes for virtually any organism are within reach for most researchers.

Having access to an accurate, complete and contiguous genome assembly promotes a wide-variety of applications of great interest to the field of evolutionary biology. A high-quality assembly provides an ideal starting point to study:

• Speciation
• Synteny
• Hybridization
• Comparative genomics

De novo genome assemblies have traditionally been pseudo-haploid in nature. Newer, more accurate long read sequencing coupled with unbiased, restriction-enzyme-free proximity ligation technology is enabling high-quality haplotype-resolved genome assemblies from a single individual. Phased haplotype blocks are now chromosome scale further empowering genetic analyses in plants and animals.

At Dovetail®, we are continually looking for ways to enrich our datasets to provide our customers with genome assemblies that will stand the test of time. Our newest workflow includes PacBio HiFi long reads assembled using HiFiasm and Omni-C^® long range proximity ligation data. The resulting two haplotype-resolved assemblies are then scaffolded to chromosome-scale using Dovetail’s proprietary HiRise software. Haplotype-resolved assemblies offer many advantages for genomic-based studies in evolution. Please see this blog post for more details.

Outsource your genome assembly to the experts at Dovetail. We will deliver a highly accurate and contiguous haplotype-resolved assembly that you can trust.

• Proprietary sample-to-publishable assembly workflow
• PacBio^® HiFi^® long reads plus Omni-C scaffolding for high-quality haplotype-resolved assembly
• Bespoke annotation pipeline with manual curation for optimal accuracy
• Dedicated Project Manager for pre- and post-project support