Lindsey J. Cantin

The paper evaluates new vertebrate genome assemblies from the VGP against previous references, finding significant improvements in completeness and accuracy.

The paper summarizes methods and lessons from assembling 16 vertebrate genomes, highlights the importance of long-read sequencing, and introduces the Vertebrate Genomes Project to generate complete reference genomes for all vertebrate species.

The paper uses PacBio long-read sequencing to generate high-quality, phased genome assemblies for zebra finch and hummingbird, correcting gene structure errors in neuroscience-relevant genes.