Locatelli Nicolas S, Baums Iliana B
Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg (HIFMB), Ammerländer, Heerstraße 231, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany.
bioRxiv. 2024 Aug 22:2024.08.21.608299. doi: 10.1101/2024.08.21.608299.
Corals populations worldwide are declining rapidly due to elevated ocean temperatures and other human impacts. The Caribbean harbors a high number of threatened, endangered, and critically endangered coral species compared to reefs of the larger Indo-Pacific. The reef corals of the Caribbean are also long diverged from their Pacific counterparts and may have evolved different survival strategies. Most genomic resources have been developed for Pacific coral species which may impede our ability to study the changes in genetic composition of Caribbean reef communities in response to global change. To help fill the gap in genomic resources, we used PacBio HiFi sequencing to generate the first genome assemblies for three Caribbean, reef-building corals, , and We also explore the genomic novelties that shape scleractinian genomes. Notably, we find abundant gene duplications of all classes (e.g., tandem and segmental), especially in This species has one of the largest genomes of any scleractinian coral (822Mb) which seems to be driven by repetitive content and gene family expansion and diversification. As the genome size of was double the size expected of stony corals, we also evaluated the possibility of an ancient whole genome duplication using Ks tests and found no evidence of such an event in the species. By presenting these genome assemblies, we hope to develop a better understanding of coral evolution as a whole and to enable researchers to further investigate the population genetics and diversity of these three species.
由于海洋温度升高和其他人类影响，全球珊瑚种群正在迅速减少。与更大的印度-太平洋珊瑚礁相比，加勒比地区拥有大量受威胁、濒危和极度濒危的珊瑚物种。加勒比地区的珊瑚礁珊瑚与太平洋的同类珊瑚也早已分化，可能已经进化出不同的生存策略。大多数基因组资源是为太平洋珊瑚物种开发的，这可能会阻碍我们研究加勒比珊瑚礁群落遗传组成因全球变化而发生的变化的能力。为了填补基因组资源的空白，我们使用PacBio HiFi测序技术为三种加勒比造礁珊瑚、 和 生成了首个基因组组装。我们还探索了塑造石珊瑚基因组的基因组新奇之处。值得注意的是，我们发现所有类别（如串联和片段）都有大量基因重复，特别是在 中。该物种拥有石珊瑚中最大的基因组之一（822Mb），这似乎是由重复序列含量以及基因家族的扩张和多样化驱动的。由于 的基因组大小是石珊瑚预期大小的两倍，我们还使用Ks检验评估了古代全基因组复制的可能性，结果在该物种中未发现此类事件的证据。通过展示这些基因组组装，我们希望能更好地全面了解珊瑚进化，并使研究人员能够进一步研究这三个物种的群体遗传学和多样性。
