The gene set for rabbit was built using the Ensembl genebuild pipeline. Gene models are based on genewise alignments of glire proteins as well as genetically distant proteins from other species, including most mammal proteins from Uniprot. To improve the accuracy of models generated from distant species, the Genewise alignments were made to stretches of genomic sequence rather than to 'miniseqs'. Additionnaly, human and mouse one-to-one orthologues were aligned using exonerate, combined with rabbit-specific proteins. The protein based gene models were then extended using rabbit cDNA and EST alignments. The resulting gene models were then assessed by generating sets of potential orthologs to genes from other vertebrate species. Potentially missing predictions and partial gene predictions were identified by examining the orthologs, which were then used to build new gene models.
Oryctolagus cuniculus is one of 24 mammals that will be sequenced as part of the Mammalian Genome Project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The species were chosen to maximise the branch length of the evolutionary tree while representing the diversity of mammalian species. Low-coverage 2X assemblies will be produced for these mammals and used in alignments for cross-species comparison. The aim is to increase our understanding of functional elements, especially in the human genome.