RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 De novo assembly of the Mongolian gerbil genome and transcriptome JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 522516 DO 10.1101/522516 A1 Shifeng Cheng A1 Yuan Fu A1 Yaolei Zhang A1 Wenfei Xian A1 Hongli Wang A1 Benedikt Grothe A1 Xin Liu A1 Xun Xu A1 Achim Klug A1 Elizabeth A McCullagh YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/24/522516.abstract AB BACKGROUND The Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) has historically been used as a model organism for the auditory and visual systems, stroke/ischemia, epilepsy and aging related research since 1935 when laboratory gerbils were separated from their wild counterparts. In this study we report genome sequencing, assembly, and annotation further supported by transcriptome data from 27 different tissues samples.FINDINGS The genome was assembled using Illumina HiSeq 2000 and resulted in a final genome size of 2.54 Gbp with contig and scaffold N50 values of 31.4 Kbp and 500.0 Kbp, respectively. Based on the k-mer estimated genome size of 2.48 Gbp, the assembly appears to be complete. The genome annotation was supported by transcriptome data that identified 36 019 predicted protein-coding genes across 27 tissue samples. A BUSCO search of 3023 mammalian groups resulted in 86% of curated single copy orthologs present among predicted genes, indicating a high level of completeness of the genome.CONCLUSIONS We report a de novo assembly of the Mongolian gerbil genome that was further enhanced by annotation of transcriptome data from several tissues. Sequencing of this genome increases the utility of the gerbil as a model organism, opening the availability of now widely used genetic tools.The data sets supporting the results of this article are available in the China National GeneBank CNSA repository, Accession id: CNP0000340.Abbreviationsbpbase pairBUSCOBenchmarking Universal Single-Copy OrthologsCDScoding sequenceLINEslong interspersed elementsLTRslong terminal repeatsMyrmillion yearsNCBINational Center for Biotechnology InformationRefSeqReference sequenceRNA-seqhigh-throughput messenger RNA sequencingRINRNA integrity numberSINEsshort interspersed elements