Ganot Philippe, Rausch Tobias, Hsi-Yang Fritz Markus, Zoccola Didier, Wang Xin, Aranda Manuel, Benes Vladimir, Allemand Denis, Tambutté Sylvie
Research Unit on the Biology of Precious Corals CSM-CHANEL, 8 Quai Antoine 1er, Monaco, Principality of Monaco.
Department of Marine Biology, CSM, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, 8 Quai Antoine 1er, Monaco, Principality of Monaco.
BMC Res Notes. 2024 Dec 21;17(1):375. doi: 10.1186/s13104-024-07006-0.
Corallium rubrum, the precious red coral, is an octocoral endemic to the western Mediterranean Sea. Like most octocorals, it produces tiny, calcified structures called sclerites. Uniquely, it also produces a completely calcified axial skeleton that is a bright red color. This combination of color and hardness has made the red coral prized for centuries, leading to extensive fishing and trade for use in jewelry. Understanding how it produces this red skeleton is thus a central question in economics, culture, and biology. To gain insights into this process, we sequenced the C. rubrum genome.
Our C. rubrum genome assembly is 655 megabases (Mb) in size, distributed across 2910 scaffolds with a very low level of unknown nucleotides (0.95%). We used a pipeline based on the MaSuRCA hybrid assembler, combining long PacBio reads and short Illumina reads, followed by several steps to improve the assembly, including scaffolding, merging, and polishing. This represents the third published genome of an octocoral and the first within the order Scleralcyonacea.
红珊瑚（Corallium rubrum）是一种珍贵的红珊瑚，是西地中海特有的八放珊瑚。与大多数八放珊瑚一样，它会产生微小的钙化结构，称为骨针。独特的是，它还会产生一种完全钙化的轴向骨骼，呈鲜红色。这种颜色和硬度的组合使得红珊瑚几个世纪以来一直备受珍视，导致人们大量捕捞并用于珠宝贸易。因此，了解它如何形成这种红色骨骼是经济学、文化和生物学领域的核心问题。为了深入了解这一过程，我们对红珊瑚的基因组进行了测序。
我们组装的红珊瑚基因组大小为655兆碱基（Mb），分布在2910个支架上，未知核苷酸水平极低（0.95%）。我们使用了基于MaSuRCA混合组装器的流程，将长读长的PacBio测序数据和短读长的Illumina测序数据相结合，随后通过几个步骤来改进组装，包括搭建支架、合并和抛光。这是已发表的第三个八放珊瑚基因组，也是软珊瑚目（Scleralcyonacea）中的第一个。
