The first genome of the cold-water octocoral, the pink sea fan, Eunicella verrucosa.
This study reports the first draft genome of the pink sea fan (Eunicella verrucosa), a temperate shallow-water octocoral species. Using 29.96 GB of PacBio continuous long read data, we produced a genome assembly of 467 Mb, comprising 11,043 contigs and an N50 of 183 kbp, capturing 86.5% of the metazoan complete BUSCO ortholog benchmark genes. In total, 213 Mb (45.96% of the genome) comprised repetitive sequences. We annotated the genome assembly using paired-end RNAseq data from coral fragments (polyp tissue and gorgonin skeleton), resulting in 41,912 protein-coding genes. Annotation filtering using 90% cluster similarity gave a final gene set containing 36,099 protein-coding genes and captured 92.2% of the complete BUSCO ortholog benchmark genes. Functional annotation of the proteome using orthology inference identified 17,432 annotated genes.