Abstract:

The challenge to provide energy-rich protein to the world while reducing the environmental impact is one of the largest challenges facing the animal industry today. To face this challenge, novel tools need to be adopted for methods to identify animals that perform optimally in their environment. This includes, but is not limited to, utilizing more complex variation, epigenetics, and microbes present within the host. A major hurdle in utilizing these data lies in the development of cost-effective and high-throughput methods for data capture. We argue that Oxford Nanopore Technologies is well-suited to fit this purpose. A computational approach called adaptive sampling couples long-read sequencing with targeted sequencing, affording the potential to capture multiple sources of information specifically and simultaneously in a sequencing run while reducing costs. This paper will discuss the potential benefits currently being explored to integrate this tool into the animal industry.