BioProject

The Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), also known as white-toothed pygmy shrew, is the smallest known extant mammal by mass, weighing only about 1.8 g (0.063 oz) on average. They prefer warm and damp climates and are widely distributed in the belt between 10 and 30 degrees N latitude stretching from Europe and North Africa up to Malaysia (from Wikipedia entry). This sample is from a cell culture line generated by Jessica Antosiewicz-Bourget and Susanne Meyer, from lung fibroblast of an adult male, at the Morgridge Institute for Research, in Madison Wisconsin. The project was coordinated by Yury Bukhman and the sample used to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genomes Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis.