High-quality genome assembly and annotation of the crested gecko (Correlophus ciliatus).

Abstract

Correlophus ciliatus, or the crested gecko, is widely kept as a pet in many countries around the world due to its ease to care and bred and its high survival rate. However, there is limited number of genomic studies on the crested gecko. In this study, we generated a high-quality chromosome-level genome assembly of the crested gecko by combining Nanopore, Illumina, and Hi-C data. The genome assemble has a size of 1.66 Gb, with scaffold N50 of 109.97 Mb, and 99.52% of the scaffold anchored on 19 chromosomes. The BUSCO analysis indicated a gene completeness of 90.3% (n=7,480), including 6,673 (89.2%) single-copy genes and 84 (1.1%) duplicated genes. Additionally, we identified 21,065 protein-coding genes using the MAKER3 annotation toolkit, with 41.98% (697.51 Mb) consisting of repetitive elements. Among these, 21,037 genes were validated through InterProScan5. Our study is the first to report a chromosome-level genome for the crested gecko. It provides valuable genomic resources for understanding molecular mechanisms under many interesting traits of the species.