North American Beaver Genome Project

Welcome to the home of the North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) Genome Project.

The human genome project has dramatically increased our knowledge of human biology and opened the door to many new medical treatments. Genome projects for plants and animals such as wheat, soybeans, horses and dogs have similarly expanded our knowledge of these organisms. However, until now, Oregon State University’s (OSU) mascot and the state animal of Oregon, the North American Beaver, had no genome project! OSU’s Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing has set out to change that. A genome project for OSU's Benny/Filbert (see image) the Beaver will greatly increase our knowledge of this industrious engineer and the benefits it contributes to Oregon’s forest and stream ecosystems. The project will also raise awareness among the children and grownups of the Beaver Nation about the contributions that genome science and OSU’s researchers make to understanding our environment.

The crowd-funding campaign ran September 16 - October 30, 2015 and was successful in raising the $30,000 needed to sequence the beaver genome.