TY - JOUR AU - Larsen, Peter A. AU - Heilman, Amy M. AU - Yoder, Anne D. PY - 2014 DA - 2014/08/26 TI - The utility of PacBio circular consensus sequencing for characterizing complex gene families in non-model organisms JO - BMC Genomics SP - 720 VL - 15 IS - 1 AB - Molecular characterization of highly diverse gene families can be time consuming, expensive, and difficult, especially when considering the potential for relatively large numbers of paralogs and/or pseudogenes. Here we investigate the utility of Pacific Biosciences single molecule real-time (SMRT) circular consensus sequencing (CCS) as an alternative to traditional cloning and Sanger sequencing PCR amplicons for gene family characterization. We target vomeronasal gene receptors, one of the most diverse gene families in mammals, with the goal of better understanding intra-specific V1R diversity of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus). Our study compares intragenomic variation for two V1R subfamilies found in the mouse lemur. Specifically, we compare gene copy variation within and between two individuals of M. murinus as characterized by different methods for nucleotide sequencing. By including the same individual animal from which the M. murinus draft genome was derived, we are able to cross-validate gene copy estimates from Sanger sequencing versus CCS methods. SN - 1471-2164 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-15-720 DO - 10.1186/1471-2164-15-720 ID - Larsen2014 ER -