NA - Consolidation of the cGRASP concept in connection with whole genome sequencing of the Atlantic salmon

The collaboration between CIGENE, Willie Davidson at Simon Fraser University and Ben Koop at University of Victoria was initiated less than two years ago. In August this year, their cGRASP project was awarded a substantial 3-year grant from Genome Canada (7MCAD). The project, with an overall budget of 15 MCAD, aims to provide many of the genomic resources needed for doing serious functional genomics research on Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. An underlying intention of the project was to provide the re maining genomic resources and the organizational nucleation point needed to perform a whole genome sequencing of Atlantic salmon. To this end the first international workshop on whole genome sequencing of salmonids was arranged at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences October 25-26 this year. The meeting was a success with participants from USDA, the Baylor College of Medicine, the Sanger Institute, three Canadian universities, three Norwegian universities, INRA, Genome Canada and the Norwegian Resear ch Council. Canada and Norway are currently the two principal nations in this international consortium concerning sequencing of Atlantic salmon. Wille Davidson, Canada, and Stig W. Omholt, Norway, are the principal architects behind the whole genome seq uencing initiative and they will therefore function as nodes for the Canadian and Norwegian involvement. The successful initiation of the whole genome sequencing of Atlantic salmon will thus be heavily dependent upon very close collaboration between these two key partners. This is the rationale behind our request for BILAT funding to operationalise the decisons made in the international salmonid consortium. There is currently no existing funding preparing the ground for the wgs initiative. Such funding wi ll therefore be highly instrumental in maintaining the current momentum, as well as to ensure that Norway keeps its current profiled position in the salmonid whole genome sequencing initiative.