Rhesus macaque is the most widely used nonhuman primate animal in biomedical research. Though the oversea scientists have sequenced the genomes of Indian rhesus macaque, it is still not enough to get a global map of genetic variations in rhesus macaque.

A research group from Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) did a collaborative sequencing on Chinese rhesus macaque genome with 11.56-fold coverage using next-generation sequencing technology.

In the research, they sequenced the genome of a male Chinese macaque and compared the data with the released reference genome of an Indian macaque. They identified a total of 2.94 million SNPs which are heterozygous in the Chinese macaque and 2.56 million SNPs which are different between the Chinese macaque and the reference Indian macaque genome. They also observed 123,610 deletions and other structural variations (SVs) through comparing Chinese with Indian macaques. Finally, a genome-wide genetic variation database named as the Chinese macaque single nucleotide polymorphism (CMSNP) database was set up using the Generic Genome Browser (GBrowse) platform.

The variation map of rhesus macaque provides a useful framework for further genome-wide association studies and also has important applications to evolutionary and functional studies. The main findings of the research have been published in Genome Biology.

Further information is available at http://genomebiology.com/2011/12/7/R63/abstract