Scientists sequenced and analyzed the genome. Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), with an average weight of about 2 grams, it is one of the world’s smallest mammals. This reference-quality genome is an important resource for studies of mammalian development, metabolism, and body size control.
The Etruscan shrew, also known as the white-toothed pygmy shrew, is recognized as one of the smallest living mammals.
This species weighs 1.2 to 2.7 grams and has a body length of 3.6 to 5.3 cm (1.4 to 2.1 inches), with a very large surface area to volume ratio.
As a result, shrews have very high metabolic rates and must consume approximately 1.5 to 2 times their body weight in food each day.
These unique physiological characteristics make the Etruscan shrew a valuable species to the scientific community, contributing significantly to various research fields such as behavioral science and neuroscience.
“High-quality genome assemblies are essential references to enable accurate high-throughput data analysis,” said computational biologist Dr. Yuri Bukman of the Morgridge Institute.
“This will provide valuable insight into the mechanisms of body size control and metabolic rate and will facilitate comparative biological studies.”
In their research, Dr. Buchmann and his colleagues sequenced and assembled the genome of a male Etruscan shrew using protocols developed by the Vertebrate Genome Project.
“Our new Etruscan shrew genome is the first chromosome-level genome assembly for the order Shrews. lilypotyphra,” they said.
The authors manually inspected the primary assembly and identified 22 chromosomes, including the X and Y sex chromosomes.
They also identified 39,091 genes, 19,819 of which were protein-coding genes.
“We found that the shrew genome has relatively little duplication,” Dr. Buchmann said.
“This result does not necessarily correlate with the smallness of the shrew itself.”
“Although shrews belong to a different mammalian family, some similarly small rodents have a lot of overlapping body segments, and Mus musculus is like the champion in the sense that it has the most overlapping segments. So it’s not a question of size.”
of result It was published in the magazine scientific data.
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YV Buchman other. 2024. Chromosome-level genome assembly of the Etruscan shrew Suncus etruscus. scientific data 11, 176; doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03011-x
Source: www.sci.news
