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Home NEWS Science News Biology

Chromosome-scale genome of a gentle giant

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
October 11, 2022
in Biology
Reading Time: 6 mins read
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The Aldabra giant tortoise is one of only two giant tortoise species left in the world, and it is currently on the threatened list. Conservation efforts are underway, but more and better tools to improve the chance of long-term success are greatly needed. A study published today by an international team of researchers has provided such a tool: they have completed and released an extremely high-quality genome sequence that will help to ensure a future for this vulnerable species. Gözde Çilingir from the University of Zurich and colleagues around the world have now provided exactly that information using a range of state-of-the-art methods to achieve a “chromosome-scale” representation of the Aldabra giant tortoise genome. This work is published in the Open Science journal GigaScience. 

Giant Tortoise Headshot

Credit: Credit Dennis Hansen

The Aldabra giant tortoise is one of only two giant tortoise species left in the world, and it is currently on the threatened list. Conservation efforts are underway, but more and better tools to improve the chance of long-term success are greatly needed. A study published today by an international team of researchers has provided such a tool: they have completed and released an extremely high-quality genome sequence that will help to ensure a future for this vulnerable species. Gözde Çilingir from the University of Zurich and colleagues around the world have now provided exactly that information using a range of state-of-the-art methods to achieve a “chromosome-scale” representation of the Aldabra giant tortoise genome. This work is published in the Open Science journal GigaScience. 

Giant tortoises could once be found on Madagascar and a variety of western Indian Ocean islands. From fossil records, giant tortoises existed on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. Today, only two giant tortoises exist: The Aldabra giant tortoise and the Galápagos giant tortoise. The Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) can reach a weight of up to 300 kg, and typically live for more than 100 years, with one individual reportedly reaching 250 years of age: if so, that would make it the oldest recorded land vertebrate. Aldabrachelys gigantea still lives in its native habitat, the Aldabra Atoll northwest of Madagascar, but the gentle giant is “vulnerable” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, meaning that the species is at a high risk of extinction in the wild. Having more tools and resources, especially genetic information, is one of the best ways to ensure long-term success of this amazing creature.

Lead researcher Çilingir emphasized this point, saying: “Genomic information is important for breeding efforts in zoos, to maintain the genetic diversity that is present in the wild.” She also spoke about the more extensive ways these data can be of use, in particular how it can aid in comparative studies with other tortoise and turtle species, adding: “We revealed that most of the genome is similar to other known genomes of Testudines (the order comprising turtles and tortoises). Tortoise species are evolutionarily closely related to each other, and therefore our data will be tremendously helpful not only for the Aldabra tortoise but for all east African and Madagascan tortoises”.

The genome sequence data the authors have generated here is at the cutting edge of what is being done in the genome sequencing arena, which is carrying out a genome sequence to “Chromosome scale.” This term is used when genome sequence data is a near gap-free representation of the sequence of more than two billion genetic “letters”, and the sequences are aligned in the same order as they appear in the actual chromosomes. Earlier genome sequences not only had far more gaps, but additionally the sequence data were put into what were called “scaffolds”: sequences that are laid out in an order relative to one another, but that are not fully anchored in space in reference to the chromosome. The current chromosome-scale genome sequences provide such fine-grained genomic information that it allows researchers to more accurately track genetic variation in wild and captive tortoises. To demonstrate how the new reference genome can be used for practical conservation and breeding efforts, the authors determined the sequence of thirty giant tortoises from the wild population and two individuals from the  Zurich Zoo. Using this data in combination with the high-quality reference genome, they were able to determine where in the Aldabra Atollthe zoo-housed animals originally stemmed from.

Having a high-quality reference genome available for this species will thus help to answer a range of biological questions – for example, to understand why the species grows to such an enormous size. With an appetite that fits their size, giant tortoises play a major role in shaping a typical island landscape, due to the massive amount of vegetation they consume. In fact, having placed giant tortoises back in their natural environment and helping them flourish may allow them to serve as ecological replacements for the extinct giant tortoises in the Western Indian Ocean islands due to their similar central role in their ecosystems. Aldabra giant tortoises act as ecosystem engineers to restore degraded island habitats, even outside their original native area. 

Restoring natural environmental protection mechanisms is an essential component for doing far more than just reducing the risk of extinction for individual species. 
 

Further Reading

Çilingir FG. et al. Chromosome-level genome assembly for the Aldabra giant tortoise enables insights into the genetic health of a threatened population. GigaScience. 11, giac090 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac090 

Also at: https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/gigascience/giac090 

 

Watch a video with the lead author, Gözde Çilingir, presenting their work alongside the very photogenic Kely, the Aldabra giant tortoise: https://youtu.be/Hak1xO-H8bM 

 

Media contacts:

GigaScience Editor-in-Chief:

Scott Edmunds, [email protected], Office: +852 3610 3531 Cell: +852 92490853

 

Sharing on social media?

Find GigaScience online on twitter @GigaScience; Facebook https://www.facebook.com/GigaScience/, and keep up-to-date with our blog http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/

 

About GigaScience Press

GigaScience Press is BGI’s Open Access Publishing division, which publishes scientific journals and data. Its publishing projects are carried out with international publishing partners and infrastructure providers, including Oxford University Press and River Valley Technologies. It currently publishes two award-winning data-centric journals: its premier journal GigaScience (launched in 2012), which won the 2018 American Publishers PROSE award for innovation in journal publishing, and its new journal GigaByte (launched 2020), which won the 2022 ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing. The press also publishes data, software, and other research objects via its GigaDB.org database. To encourage transparent reporting of scientific research and to enable future access and analyses, it is a requirement of manuscript submission to all GigaScience Press journals that all supporting data and source code be made openly available in GigaDB or in a community approved, publicly available repository.

 

About GigaScience

GigaScience is co-published by GigaScience Press and Oxford University Press. Winner of the 2018 PROSE award for Innovation in Journal Publishing (Multidisciplinary), the journal covers research that uses or produces ‘big data’ from the full spectrum of the biological and biomedical sciences. It also serves as a forum for discussing the difficulties of and unique needs for handling large-scale data from all areas of the life and medical sciences. The journal has a completely novel publication format — one that integrates manuscript publication with complete data hosting, and analyses tool incorporation. To encourage transparent reporting of scientific research as well as enable future access and analyses, it is a requirement of manuscript submission to GigaScience that all supporting data and source code be made available in the GigaScience database, GigaDB, as well as in publicly available repositories. GigaScience will provide users access to associated online tools and workflows, and has integrated a data analysis platform, maximizing the potential utility and re-use of data.



Journal

GigaScience

DOI

10.1093/gigascience/giac090

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Chromosome-level genome assembly for the Aldabra giant tortoise enables insights into the genetic health of a threatened population

Article Publication Date

12-Oct-2022

COI Statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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