mm10 vs Grcm38(Gencode)

[pdellorusso]

This is a question, not an issue, but I am curious about whether there is a specific reason to use mm10 over the GRCm38 (https://www.gencodegenes.org/mouse/) primary assembly available from Gencode?

Is this the standard mouse genome assembly to use for all Encode standardized pipelines?

[strattan]

@pdellorusso Thanks for your question. The GRCm38 build ENCODE uses is based on what GRC calls the "latest major release", which is at the "GRCm38" tab here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/grc/mouse

We do not apply the periodic patches GRC applies, which is up to p6 at this time.

The mm10 ENCODE uses for mapping has chromosome names in "UCSC format" (like "chr1"), and includes autosomes, both sex chromosomes, M, and the unplaced and unlocalized scaffolds. Downstream analysis may choose to use any subset of those mappings but the mapping is always to the same reference.

For transcript annotations, we have used GENCODE M4 https://www.gencodegenes.org/mouse/release_M4.html. We anticipate upgrading to a more recent GENCODE build this year, but the ENCODE RNA working group have not decided on exactly which build or what that timeline is. When we do decide, we will make an announcement on https://www.encodeproject.org/

I hope that's helpful!