| Summary: | <i>Acanthamoeba triangularis</i> strain SH 621 is a free-living amoeba belonging to <i>Acanthamoeba</i> ribo-genotype T4. This ubiquitous protist is among the free-living amoebas responsible for <i>Acanthamoeba</i> keratitis, a severe infection of human cornea. Genome sequencing and genomic comparison were carried out to explore the biological functions and to better understand the virulence mechanism related to the pathogenicity of <i>Acanthamoeba</i> keratitis. The genome assembly harbored a length of 66.43 Mb encompassing 13,849 scaffolds. The analysis of predicted proteins reported the presence of 37,062 ORFs. A complete annotation revealed 33,168 and 16,605 genes that matched with NCBI non-redundant protein sequence (nr) and Cluster of Orthologous Group of proteins (COG) databases, respectively. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes Pathway (KEGG) annotation reported a great number of genes related to carbohydrate, amino acid and lipid metabolic pathways. The pangenome performed with 8 available amoeba genomes belonging to genus <i>Acanthamoeba</i> revealed a core genome containing 843 clusters of orthologous genes with a ratio core genome/pangenome of less than 0.02. We detected 48 genes related to virulent factors of <i>Acanthamoeba</i> keratitis. Best hit analyses in nr database identified 99 homologous genes shared with amoeba-resisting microorganisms. This study allows the deciphering the genome of a free-living amoeba with medical interest and provides genomic data to better understand virulence-related <i>Acanthamoeba</i> keratitis.
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