Saguinus oedipus Genome sequencing and assembly
The Cotton-Top Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) is a critically endangered primate species endemic to northwest Columbia, with the estimated wild population resting in the thousands. As the Cotton-Top Tamarin naturally develops intestinal disease in a similar manner to humans, they have been used as a model organism in biomedical research for several decades. Yet still, no reference genome for this species exists. Though their designation as a critically endangered species makes sample collection near-impossible, luckily there exists an immortalized cell line produced from a Cotton-Top Tamarin in 1972. With this cell line - B95-8 - a chromosome-length assembly was produced via PacBio circular consensus sequencing (CCS) scaffolded with Bionano optical genome mapping (OGM) data.