Otter Genomics

Aquatic adaptation and depleted diversity in the sea otter and giant otter genomes.

I have sequenced, assembled and annotated the de novo southern sea otter genome, and annotated the giant otter genome that was assembled by the Broad Institute. We are comparing these two highly divergent otter species to understand the genetic changes that underlie their recent aquatic adaptation and to get a first look at the potential impacts of the extreme fur trade bottleneck on the sea otter’s genome.

Stay tuned for more discussion of our results soon!