High-quality genome assembles from key Hawaiian coral species

• DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giac098
• Publication Date: 2022-11-10T02:04:57Z
• Authors: Timothy G Stephens; JunMo Lee; YuJin Jeong; Hwan Su Yoon; Hollie M Putnam; Eva Majerová; Debashish Bhattac...
• Keywords: Zooxanthellae; Anthozoa

Abstract Background Coral reefs house about 25% of marine biodiversity and are critical for the livelihood many communities by providing food, tourism revenue, protection from wave surge. These magnificent ecosystems under existential threat anthropogenic climate change. Whereas extensive ecological physiological studies have addressed coral response to environmental stress, high-quality reference genome data lacking these species. The latter issue hinders efforts understand genetic basis stress resistance design informed conservation strategies. Results We report assemblies 4 key Hawaiian species, Montipora capitata, Pocillopora acuta, meandrina, Porites compressa. or members genera, distributed worldwide therefore broad scientific importance. For M. an initial assembly was generated short-read Illumina long-read PacBio data, which then scaffolded into 14 putative chromosomes using Omni-C sequencing. P. compressa, were data. acuta is a triploid individual, making it first nondiploid animal. Conclusions significant improvements over available provide invaluable resources supporting multiomics biology, not just in Hawaiʻi but also other regions, where related species exist. provides platform studying polyploidy corals its role evolution adaptation organisms.