Find in Library

The tomato hind, <i>Cephalopholis sonnerati</i>, is a bottom-dwelling coral reef fish, which is widely distributed in the Indo-Pacific and Red Sea. <i>C. sonnerati</i> also features complex social structures and behaviour mechanisms. Here, we present a high-quality, chromosome-level genome assembly for <i>C. sonnerati</i> that was derived using PacBio sequencing and Hi-C technologies. A 1043.66 Mb genome with an N50 length of 2.49 Mb was assembled, produced containing 795 contigs assembled into 24 chromosomes. Overall, 97.2% of the complete BUSCOs were identified in the genome. A total of 26,130 protein-coding genes were predicted, of which 94.26% were functionally annotated. Evolutionary analysis revealed that <i>C. sonnerati</i> diverged from its common ancestor with <i>E. lanceolatus</i> and <i>E. akaara</i> approximately 41.7 million years ago. In addition, comparative genome analyses indicated that the expanded gene families were highly enriched in the sensory system. Finally, we found the tissue-specific expression of 8108 genes. We found that these tissue-specific genes were highly enriched in the brain. In brief, the high-quality, chromosome-level reference genome will provide a valuable genome resource for studies of the genetic conservation, resistance breeding, and evolution of <i>C. sonnerati</i>.