BioSample

The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world's most endangered large whale species; the latest estimates suggests fewer than 350 individuals remaining. Two other right whale species exist: the North Pacific right whale, found in the North Pacific Ocean; and the southern right whale, found in the southern hemisphere. Right whales are baleen whales, feeding on copepods (tiny crustaceans) by straining huge volumes of ocean water through their baleen plates, which act like a sieve. By the early 1890s, commercial whalers had hunted North Atlantic right whales to the brink of extinction. They got their name from being the "right" whales to hunt because they floated when they were killed. Whaling is no longer a threat, but they have never recovered to pre-whaling numbers, and human interactions still present the greatest danger. Entanglements in fishing gear and vessel strikes are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale mortality. Increasing ocean noise levels from human activities are also a concern since the noise may interfere with right whale communication and increase their stress levels (NOAA website). This sample was taken by Teri Rowels and Bob Bonde from a male calf that beach-stranded, stored in liquid nitrogen at the National Marine Mammal Tissue Bank, and later provided to generate a high-quality reference for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genomes Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis. In-situ Hi-C data (Rao, Huntley et al., Cell 2014) were provided by DNAzoo (from the same animal; DNAzoo.org assembly ID Eubalaena_glacialis_HiC, SRX7735937, SRX7735938). This assembly is under the limited use G10K embargo policy from the date of submission: https://genome10k.ucsc.edu/data-use-policies/