Killer Whale Genome Project

Killer whales. Image source: NOAA/Robert Pittman [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

About the Project

The BCM-HGSC has sequenced the genome of the killer whale (Orcinus orca) to study the evolution of marine mammals and as a resource for studies of the killer whale populations around the world. The high quality Illumina draft genome assembly was published and the data is available in NCBI.

The project was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) with additional funding from grant DNRF94 to M. Thomas P. Gilbert and European Union Intra-European Fellowship grant KWAF10 to Andrew D. Foote.

Genomic Resources 

Additional Resources

Learn more about the killer whale