[Question] Use of Orpheum for non mammalian species ?

[RxLoutre]

Hello !

I have recently started to learn scRNAseq analysis. I have read some parts of your paper about Kmermaid and Orpheum and I found it a very promising approach as we are studying, indeed, a species with no reference genome, and it's closely relates specie's genome is also of poor quality (highly fragmented).

We are now at a time where we have to decide if we should try and go for a de novo assembly so we can get valuable insights with scRNAseq data later on. I could be really interested in using kermermaid and orpheum, although this sentence in the paper caught my eye : "Thus, using a mammalian protein reference database, orpheum can unlock the potential of single-cell RNA-seq atlases for any placental mammal." So what if the specie we are studying is a reptile ? Would that work well too in your opinion ?

Thank you for your help !

Best,

Roxane