De Novo Genome Assembly of the Sea Star <i>Patiria pectinifera</i> (Muller & Troschel, 1842) Using Oxford Nanopore Technology and Illumina Platforms

The sea star <i>Patiria pectinifera</i> (Asteroidea; Asterinidae; homotypic synonym: <i>Asterina pectinifera</i>; Muller & Troschel, 1842) is widely distributed in the coastal regions of the Seas of East Asia and the northern Pacific Ocean. Here, a de novo genome sequence of <i>P. pectinifera</i> as a reference for fundamental and applied research was constructed by employing a combination of long-read Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) PromethION, short-read Illumina platforms, and 10 × Genomics. The draft genome of <i>P. pectinifera</i>, containing 13,848,344 and 156,878,348 contigs from ONT and Illumina platforms, respectively, was obtained. Assembly with CANU resulted in 2262 contigs with an N50 length of 367 kb. Finally, ARCS + LINKS assembly combined these contigs into 328 scaffolds, totaling 499 Mb with an N50 length of 2 Mbp. The estimated genome size by GenomeScope analysis was 461 Mb. BUSCO analysis indicated that 930 (97.5%) of the expected genes were found in the assembly, with 889 (93.2%) being single-copy and 41 (4.3%) duplicated after searching against the metazoan database. Annotation, utilizing sequences obtained from Illumina RNA-Seq and Pacific Biosciences Iso-Seq, led to the identification of 22,367 protein-coding genes. When examining the orthologous relationship of <i>P. pectinifera</i> against the scaffolds of the common sea star <i>Patiria miniata</i>, high contiguity was observed. Annotation of repeat elements highlighted an enrichment of 1,121,079 transposable elements, constituting 47% of the genome, suggesting their potential role in shaping the genome structure of <i>P. pectinifera</i>. This de novo genome assembly is expected to be a valuable resource for future studies, providing insight into the developmental, environmental, and ecological aspects of <i>P. pectinifera</i> biology.