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The sequencing era has provided access to genomic sequences of many plant and animal species. These sequences provide important amounts of information that must be decoded in order for them to have a meaning, like a book written in a language that you must be able to speak in order to understand. It is therefore necessary to "map" the genome to understand and discover what is hidden underneath DNA sequences. Once the genome has been mapped, at least in part, it is easier to understand the association between genes and traits of an animal. The FAANG intitative (Fucntion Annotation of Animal Genomes), which began in 2015, is an international project whose objective is the creaton of annotated genomes for several domestic animal species. INRAE is at the heart of this initiative and has launched the French pilot project FR-AgENCODE with the goal of improving the annotation of the genome of four species (cow, chicken, goat and pig).

At the beginning of the proejct the reference annotation had recorded between 27 000 and 53 000 genes depending on the species.Thanks to experimentation, scientists were able to detect and annotate between 58 000 and 85 000 genes, doubling the number of genes known. Between 75 000 and 149 000 regions potentially implicated in the regulation of the expression of these genes (and possibly in the variation of traits that depend on them) were also detected, mainly in regions of the genome not yet characterized.

Scientists analyzed different states of DNA - its compaction, folding and 3D organization - which will allow or not the expression of genes. The combination of this information on annotated functional maps will allow to determine what regions of each genome are active, with what timeframe, in what context, in what cells and tissues; thus they contribute to predictive biology.

The annotation data will be used to better understant how animal genomes function, but also to improve the precision and robustness of genomic selection. This project represents a crutial step in the study of the relationship between genetic variants present on the genome sequence and phenotypes on the molecular, cellular, and in fine, individual scales.