Sanguina aurantia genome assembly; two representative variants of the cosmopolitan red snow alga
'Watermelon snow' is a global phenomenon in which blooms of microalgae darken the surface of snowfields and accelerate the effects of global warming on snowmelt. Sanguina, is a dominating genus in red snow blooms. A culture did not exist for Sanguina or any red-jewelled snow algal species until the successful culturing of Sanguina aurantia in 2019 (Raymond et al., 2022). We have used a hybrid sequencing approach to assemble a de novo genome of S. aurantia with Illumina, Oxford Nanopore, and Hi-C technology. We present two variants of S. aurantia in a batch genome submission, detailed in the referenced journal article. We present the annotation of a snow algal genome, verified with RNA-seq data, for future use in cold-adaptation and green algal evolution studies.