Chlorocebus aethiops

Vervet Monkey

Vervet Monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops)

Habitat

The vervet (Chlorocebus aethiops) is an old world monkey belonging to the family Cercopithecidae. Historically the vervet has resided in the savanna and lower mountain ranges of Southeastern Africa. The vervet has spread to over 38 nations in Africa and is also found on several Caribbean islands in the West Indies. This successful geographical distribution is due to a tolerance to humid rainforests, semi-desert environments, or swamps.

Biology

The vervet lifespan in the wild is on average 12 years and they reach a mature height and weight of 450 mm and 5 kg, respectively. Similar to chimpanzees and baboons, the vervet consumes an omnivorous diet consisting of mostly flowers and fruits but including small vertebrate prey. Generally, a colony will travel, eat, socialize and sleep as a group. The main predators are felid such as cheetahs and leopards, and in some regions humans hunt them for food or to thin overcrowded populations in urban areas.

Captive populations of vervets are kept due to their importance as a model organism for the study of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, Parkinson’s, substance abuse, attention deficit disorder, alcoholism, reproduction, tissue regeneration and other conditions. Vervets are one of the few nonhuman primates that naturally develop high blood pressure. Interestingly, the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the precursor to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), infects many vervet species with widespread variation in resistance making vervets ideal for the study of the spread and progression of HIV/AIDS.

Genome Sequencing Plan

For the reference vervet genome, an adult male vervet monkey (#1994-021) sample (from the Vervet Research Colony (at Wake Forest University), representing the sub-species C. aethiops sabeus (Caribbean)) used for CHORI-252 library construction will be used to generate ~18X whole genome coverage of mixed 454 XLR fragment, 454 XLR 3 and 10kb paired ends. In addition, the CHORI-252 library has been end-sequenced to completion by Dr. Ken Dewar’s group at Montreal and will be valuable for assembly scaffold building. The CHORI-252 library will provide BAC resources for validating assembly quality, improving assembly contiguity and resolving repetitive structures in biomedically relevant regions. In addition to the reference genome, we are generating paired end genomic sequences for 5 subspecies representing geographically distinct populations (C. aethiops aethiops, C. aethiops tantalus, C. aethiops pygerythrus, C. aethiops cynosures, C. aethiops sabeus (West Africa)). We will target ~10x coverage for each subspecies composed of 100 bp paired-end reads on the Illumina platform. Funding for the sequencing of the vervet genome is provided by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Collaborators:
Wes Warren, The Genome Institute
George Weinstock, The Genome Institute
Ken Dewar, McGill University

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Contacts

Name	Affiliation
Wes Warren	The Genome Institute, Washington University School of Medicine

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