BioSample

The Mississippi diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin pileata) belongs to a turtle species native to the brackish coastal tidal marshes of the Northeastern and southern United States, and in Bermuda. Terrapins are strong swimmers, and have strongly webbed hind feet (from Wikipedia entries). This sample was procured by Matthew Wolak and his graduate student Iwo Gross from Auburn University in Alabama, and 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.