Chromosomal-Level Assembly of the Asian Seabass Genome Using Long Sequence Reads and Multi-layered Scaffolding.

• Main Authors: Shubha Vij, Heiner Kuhl, Inna S Kuznetsova, Aleksey Komissarov, Andrey A Yurchenko, Peter Van Heusden, Siddharth Singh, Natascha M Thevasagayam, Sai Rama Sridatta Prakki, Kathiresan Purushothaman, Jolly M Saju, Junhui Jiang, Stanley Kimbung Mbandi, Mario Jonas, Amy Hin Yan Tong, Sarah Mwangi, Doreen Lau, Si Yan Ngoh, Woei Chang Liew, Xueyan Shen, Lawrence S Hon, James P Drake, Matthew Boitano, Richard Hall, Chen-Shan Chin, Ramkumar Lachumanan, Jonas Korlach, Vladimir Trifonov, Marsel Kabilov, Alexey Tupikin, Darrell Green, Simon Moxon, Tyler Garvin, Fritz J Sedlazeck, Gregory W Vurture, Gopikrishna Gopalapillai, Vinaya Kumar Katneni, Tansyn H Noble, Vinod Scaria, Sridhar Sivasubbu, Dean R Jerry, Stephen J O'Brien, Michael C Schatz, Tamás Dalmay, Stephen W Turner, Si Lok, Alan Christoffels, László Orbán
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2016-04-01
• Series: PLoS Genetics
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4833346?pdf=render
• ISSN: 1553-7390; 1553-7404

We report here the ~670 Mb genome assembly of the Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer), a tropical marine teleost. We used long-read sequencing augmented by transcriptomics, optical and genetic mapping along with shared synteny from closely related fish species to derive a chromosome-level assembly with a contig N50 size over 1 Mb and scaffold N50 size over 25 Mb that span ~90% of the genome. The population structure of L. calcarifer species complex was analyzed by re-sequencing 61 individuals representing various regions across the species' native range. SNP analyses identified high levels of genetic diversity and confirmed earlier indications of a population stratification comprising three clades with signs of admixture apparent in the South-East Asian population. The quality of the Asian seabass genome assembly far exceeds that of any other fish species, and will serve as a new standard for fish genomics.