The draft genome of Spironucleus barkhanus
Briefly describes the Metamonads are a group of microbial, flagellated and amitochondriate Eukaryotes. One major sub-group are the diplomonads that live as parasites or commensals of animals or free-living in low-oxygen environments. Genomic information is available for parasitic diplomonads like Giardia intestinalis and Spironucleus salmonicida, while little is known about the genomic arrangements of commensal and free-living diplomonads. We have generated the first draft genome of the commensal diplomonad, Spironucleus barkhanus. The final version of the genome assembly is fragmented (855 contigs) but substantially larger (26.9 Mbp) than the morphologically identical salmon parasite S. salmonicida (14.7 Mbp). Alignment of complementary genomic regions between S. salmonicida and S. barkhanus shows large duplications in the latter. The S. barkhanus genome encodes 20301 proteins and many are found in X to Y copies. Interspersed repeats comprise 24% of the genome (558 Retroelements, 960 DNA transposons, whereas the S. salmonicida genome has only 7% interspersed repeats. The genome duplications, large expansions of protein-encoding capacity and the interspersed repeats are the major reasons for the larger genome size of S. barkhanus compared to S. salmonicida. The genome from this commensal diplomonad in salmonid fish will be the basis for further studies of the pathogenicity of S. salmonicida and it will simply the development of new molecular diagnostic tools. The bioinformatic pipeline, combined with long-read sequencing, will simplify further analyses of diplomonad genomes. goals, purpose, and scope of the Study.  This need not be listed if it can be inherited from a referenced publication.
Briefly describes the Metamonads are a group of microbial, flagellated and amitochondriate Eukaryotes. One major sub-group are the diplomonads that live as parasites or commensals of animals or free-living in low-oxygen environments. Genomic information is available for parasitic diplomonads like Giardia intestinalis and Spironucleus salmonicida, while little is known about the genomic arrangements of commensal and free-living diplomonads. We have generated the first draft genome of the commensal diplomonad, Spironucleus barkhanus. The final version of the genome assembly is fragmented (855 contigs) but substantially larger (26.9 Mbp) than the morphologically identical salmon parasite S. salmonicida (14.7 Mbp). Alignment of complementary genomic regions between S. salmonicida and S. barkhanus shows large duplications in the latter. The S. barkhanus genome encodes 20301 proteins and many are found in X to Y copies. Interspersed repeats comprise 24% of the genome (558 Retroelements, 960 DNA transposons, whereas the S. salmonicida genome has only 7% interspersed repeats. The genome duplications, large expansions of protein-encoding capacity and the interspersed repeats are the major reasons for the larger genome size of S. barkhanus compared to S. salmonicida. The genome from this commensal diplomonad in salmonid fish will be the basis for further studies of the pathogenicity of S. salmonicida and it will simply the development of new molecular diagnostic tools. The bioinformatic pipeline, combined with long-read sequencing, will simplify further analyses of diplomonad genomes. goals, purpose, and scope of the Study.  This need not be listed if it can be inherited from a referenced publication.