A chromosome-level genome assembly of the red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus

Abstract

Sciaenops ocellatus, also known as red drum, is a valuable commercial fish that is widely cultured in China. In recent years, while the genetic research and molecular breeding on S. ocellatus has been widely performed, whole-genome resources are lacking. In our study, we assembled the S. ocellatus genome by high-quality genome sequencing, followed by complete annotation. The size of final genome was 686.62 Mb and N50 length of contig and scaffold is 99.71 Kb and 25.62 Mb, respectively. Using the Hi-C technology, we obtained 24 pseudochromosomes containing 87.82% of the total scaffolds. We annotated 20,053 protein-coding genes in S. ocellatus genome, of which 99.93% were homologous to proteins in different database. Totally, we detected 133.54 Mb repeat sequences, which accounts for 19.45% of the assembly. According to the phylogenetic analysis, S. ocellatus is most closed to L. croea with a divergence time about 30 million years ago. We assembled a high-quality genome that will be a valuable resource to further study the biology of S. ocellatus and will inform how to breed the red drum to enhance its economic traits.

Keywords

• Red drum
• Whole-genome
• Chromosomal assembly
• Phylogenetic
• Genome evolution