We are pleased to announce the publication of the following invited review on marine mammal genomics in the Journal of Heredity:
Genomic Methods Take the Plunge: Recent Advances in High-Throughput Sequencing of Marine Mammals
Kristina M. Cammen, Kimberly R. Andrews, Emma L. Carroll, Andrew D. Foote, Emily Humble, Jane I. Khudyakov, Marie Louis, Michael R. McGowen, Morten Tange Olsen, and Amy M. Van Cise
The
dramatic increase in the application of genomic techniques to non-model
organisms (NMOs) over the past decade has yielded numerous valuable
contributions to evolutionary biology and ecology, many of which would
not have been possible with traditional genetic markers. We review this
recent progression with a particular focus on genomic studies of marine
mammals, a group of taxa that represent key macroevolutionary
transitions from terrestrial to marine environments and for which
available genomic resources have recently undergone notable rapid
growth. Genomic studies of NMOs utilize an expanding range of
approaches, including whole genome sequencing, restriction
site-associated DNA sequencing, array-based sequencing of single
nucleotide polymorphisms and target sequence probes (e.g., exomes), and
transcriptome sequencing. These approaches generate different types and
quantities of data, and many can be applied with limited or no prior
genomic resources, thus overcoming one traditional limitation of
research on NMOs. Within marine mammals, such studies have thus far
yielded significant contributions to the fields of phylogenomics and
comparative genomics, as well as enabled investigations of fitness,
demography, and population structure. Here we review the primary options
for generating genomic data, introduce several emerging techniques, and
discuss the suitability of each approach for different applications in
the study of NMOs.
The full article is freely available online at http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/08/10/jhered.esw044.full