A Telomere-to-telomere genome of the hibernating fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius)

Authors

Breit, A. M., Takeshita, R. S. C., Ehmke, E., Walls, C., Billington, C., Larsen, P., McLain, A., Faulk, C.

Abstract

Madagascars dwarf lemurs (genus Cheirogaleus) are the only obligate-hibernating primates and closest relative to humans capable of hibernation. Endemic to the increasingly fragmented dry forests of Madagascar, the fat tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius) represents a unique model for understanding primate physiology and tropical hibernation. Here we present FatTail1, a highly contiguous diploid genome assembly generated from a male C. medius at the Duke Lemur Center using Oxford Nanopore Technologies PromethION sequencing. The assembly spans 2.3 Gb, with an N50 of 103Mb, L50 of 10, and a BUSCO completeness score of over 99%. In addition to a complete mitogenome, we generated allele-specific DNA methylation profiles and annotated 23,925 genes using NCBIs EGAPX. FatTail1 exceeds the gap-free contiguity of previously published strepsirrhine genomes, representing the first telomere-to-telomere genome of a Strepsirrhine primate, and providing a foundation for future studies of primate hibernation, epigenetic regulation, and conservation genomics.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 06 Aug 2026.

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