title: First draft genome sequence of the Japanese eel, Anguilla japonica.
abstract: The Japanese eel is a much appreciated research object and very important for Asian aquaculture; however, its genomic resources are still limited. We have used a streamlined bioinformatics pipeline for the de novo assembly of the genome sequence of the Japanese eel from raw Illumina sequence reads. The total assembled genome has a size of 1.15 Gbp, which is divided over 323,776 scaffolds with an N50 of 52,849 bp, a minimum scaffold size of 200 bp and a maximum scaffold size of 1.14 Mbp. Direct comparison of a representative set of scaffolds revealed that all the Hox genes and their intergenic distances are almost perfectly conserved between the European and the Japanese eel. The first draft genome sequence of an organism strongly catalyzes research progress in multiple fields. Therefore, the Japanese eel genome sequence will provide a rich resource of data for all scientists working on this important fish species.
authors.affiliation: ZF-screens B.V., Niels Bohrweg 11, 2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands. henkel@zfscreens.com
authors.forename: Christiaan V
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Henkel
authors.forename: Ron P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Dirks
authors.forename: Daniëlle L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: de Wijze
authors.forename: Yuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Minegishi
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aoyama
authors.forename: Hans J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Jansen
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: Bjarne
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Knudsen
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bundgaard
authors.forename: Kenneth Lyneborg
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Hvam
authors.forename: Marten
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Boetzer
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Pirovano
authors.forename: Finn-Arne
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Weltzien
authors.forename: Sylvie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dufour
authors.forename: Katsumi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tsukamoto
authors.forename: Herman P
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Spaink
authors.forename: Guido E E J M
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: van den Thillart
mesh_terms: D000811:Anguilla / Q000235:genetics*; D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D016678:Genome