Annotation

The gene set for microbat was built using the Ensembl pipeline. Gene models are based on genewise alignments of microbat proteins, mammal proteins as well as genetically distance proteins from other species, including most vertebrate proteins from Uniprot. Additionally, dog and cow proteins were aligned using exonerate. The protein based gene models were then extended using microbat and cow cDNA. In addition to the coding transcript models, non-coding RNAs and pseudogenes were annotated

Mammalian Genome Project

Myotis lucifugus is one of 24 mammals that will be sequenced as part of the Mammalian Genome Project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A group of species were chosen to maximise the branch length of the evolutionary tree while representing the diversity of mammalian species. The aim is to increase our understanding of functional elements, especially in the human genome.