Chromosome-level genome assembly of the African pike, Hepsetus odoe

Abstract

The order Characiformes is one of the largest components of the freshwater teleost fauna inhabiting exclusively in South America and Africa with great ecological and economical significance. Yet, quite limited genomic resources are available to study this group and their transatlantic vicariance. In this study we present a chromosome-level genome assembly of the African pike (Hepsetus odoe), a representative member of the African Characiformes. To this end, we generated 119, 11, and 67 Gb reads using the single tube long fragment read (stLFR), Oxford Nanopore, and Hi-C sequencing technologies, respectively. We obtained an 862.1 Mb genome assembly with the contig and scaffold N50 of 347.4 kb and 25.8 Mb, respectively. Hi-C sequencing produced 29 chromosomes with 742.5 Mb, representing 86.1% of the genome. 24,314 protein-coding genes were predicted and 23,999 (98.7%) genes were functionally annotated. The chromosomal-scale genome assembly will be useful for functional and evolutionary studies of the African pike and promote the study of Characiformes speciation and evolution.