Journal article
A Chromosome-Scale Hybrid Genome Assembly of the Extinct Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus)
C Feigin, S Frankenberg, A Pask
Genome Biology and Evolution | Published : 2022
DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evac048
Abstract
The extinct Tasmanian tiger or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was a large marsupial carnivore native to Australia. Once ranging across parts of the mainland, the species remained only on the island of Tasmania by the time of European colonization. It was driven to extinction in the early 20th century and is an emblem of native species loss in Australia. The thylacine was a striking example of convergent evolution with placental canids, with which it shared a similar skull morphology. Consequently, it has been the subject of extensive study. While the original thylacine assemblies published in 2018 enabled the first exploration of the species' genome biology, further progress is hindered..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and Museums Victoria for the use of the images in fig. 1b and c, respectively. This work is supported by Discovery Projects DP210102645 and DP210100505 from the Australian Research Council to A.P. and S.F. C.F. is supported by Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award 1F32GM139240-01 by the National Institute of General Medicinal Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. C.F. performed all genomic analyses. A.P. and S.F. collected and sequenced fat-tailed dunnart samples used in heterozygosity analyses. C.F. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors. We thank Elise Ireland for proofreading.