title: Animal sample from Latimeria chalumnae (African coelacanth) for VGP reference genome, fLatCha2
organism: Latimeria chalumnae
description: The African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) is a lobe-finned fish or crossopterygian, one of two extant species of coelacanth, a rare order of vertebrates more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods than to the common ray-finned fishes. The African coelacanth was believed to have been extinct over 65 million years ago, but was rediscovered off the coast of South Africa in 1938. (from Wikipedia and NOAA fisheries entries). This sample of an individual found on the Comoros Islands was coordinated by Chris Amemiya, and used to generate Hi-C scaffolding for the fLatCha1 reference genome assembly for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genome Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Erich D. Jarvis, Olivier Fedrigo, Giulio Formenti, and Jennifer Balacco. Data on this specimen can be found in a paper by Nulens, Scott and Herbin in Smithiana Special Publication 3,12 September 2011: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285499945_An_updated_inventory_of_all_known_specimens_of_the_coelacanth_Latimeria_spp