Genome assembly, Full-length transcriptome, and isoform diversity of Red Snapper, Lutjanus argentimaculatus

Abstract

Abstract The mangrove red snapper, Lutjanus argentimaculatus, is a marine food fish of economic and aquaculture importance. The application of genomic selection-based breeding programs for this species is limited by the absence of a reference genome and transcriptome profiles. The current study attempted to fill this void by generating genomic and transcriptomic resources for red snapper. Using PacBio long reads, and Arima Hi-C linked reads, a scaffold-level genome assembly was generated for L. argentimaculatus. The assembly is of 1.03 Gb comprising of 400 scaffolds with N50 of 33.8 Mb and was assessed to be 97.2% complete upon benchmarking with BUSCO. Full-length transcriptome generated with PacBio Iso-Sequencing strategy using six tissues (muscle, gills, liver, kidney, stomach, and gonad) contained 56,515 isoforms belonging to 18,108 unique genes with N50 length of 3,973 bp. The resources generated will have potential applications in the functional studies, conservation, broodstock management and selective breeding programmes of L. argentimaculatus.