11/14/24 – Exciting update! The new rat reference assembly GRCr8 is published

GRCr8 is the latest version of the rat reference genome assembly, an evolution of mRatBN7.2. This assembly is published with 40× PacBio HiFi sequencing coverage and scaffolding using optical mapping and Hi-C. It features higher quality and adds 1100+ new protein-coding genes. Additional short read genomic sequence from a BN/NHsdMcwi rat in the Hybrid Rat Diversity Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin was used for assembly polishing. The genome size increased, largely because of improvement in the structure of some genomic regions, in particular chrY. This assembly is being annotated by groups such as RefSeq/ NCBI and Ensembl for gene models, mapping positions and locations of genes, introns/exons structure, and other genomic elements. It is being integrated into genome browsers at various resources, such as the Rat Genome Database JBrowse 2. The paper is available here