User Group Meeting: Using grizzly bears to unlock the biomedical promise of hibernation

In this PacBio User Group Meeting presentation, Shawn Trojahn of Washington State University describes transcriptome sequencing and analysis of grizzly bears focused on differential gene expression during hibernation and active cycles, potentially offering human-relevant information about muscle atrophy and insulin resistance. The team was able to identify more unique isoforms just from liver tissue than had been previously characterized in the entire reference genome. Of particular interest: more than 2,000 transcripts differentially expressed between hibernation and active season, including 86 genes that have isoforms expressed in opposite directions.