December 3 or 5, noon – 2:00pm, via Zoom
Phoebe Carnes
Dr. Graham Reynolds
McCullough Fellowship: Department of Biology
Eastern Elk (Cervus canadensis) once roamed the southern Appalachian mountains. Their value as game animals led to their being hunted to extinction in this region by the end of the 19th century, along with other megafauna. In 2000 and 2001, elk were
reintroduced into Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM), albeit with individuals of a different subspecies (Cervus canadensis manitobensis) originating from Manitoba, Canada. Since the reintroduction, the herd has grown steadily but slowly, splitting into at least two minimally connected herds in the Oconoluftee and Cataloochee sections of the GRSM. In the last quarter century, there has been little research on the genetic health of the GRSM elk population. In part, this is owing to the expense and challenge
of establishing genetic techniques to identify the management concerns for the herd. However, recently developed technologies leveraging whole-genome sequencing could prove valuable for understanding important genetic issues such as gene flow, genetic
drift, and inbreeding. This project was a collaboration with GRSM park biologists to understand the population ecology and dynamics of the elk herd to develop a novel method for genetic analysis. This project is working to benchmark nanopore sequencing, a third generation sequencing technology, in generating elk genomes. DNA
extracted from a tissue biopsy of an adult female will be used in the Rapid Sequencing Kit chemistry on the Oxford Nanopore platform to generate a low-pass genome sequence. The rocky mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) reference genome will be used for alignment. If this method proves useful in generating whole-genome
information from the elk sample, a protocol will be written to share with GRSM biologists. This research brings novel technologies from the academic research lab directly to end-users in the GRSM, with the goal of improving the long-term sustainability of the GRSM elk herd.