Chromosome-scale genome assembly of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), an emerging model species

A highly-complete chromosome-scale genome assembly of the brown anole, Anolis sagrei , provides insight into the evolution of sex chromosomes and is a crucial resource for this model lizard species. Rapid technological improvements are democratizing access to high quality, chromosome-scale genome assemblies. No longer the domain of only the most highly studied model organisms, now non-traditional and emerging model species can be genome-enabled using a combination of sequencing technologies and assembly software. Consequently, old ideas built on sparse sampling across the tree of life have recently been amended in the face of genomic data drawn from a growing number of high-quality reference genomes. Arguably the most valuable are those long-studied species for which much is already known about their biology; what many term emerging model species. Here, we report a highly complete chromosome-scale genome assembly for the brown anole, Anolis sagrei – a lizard species widely studied across a variety of disciplines and for which a high-quality reference genome was long overdue. This assembly exceeds the vast majority of existing reptile and snake genomes in contiguity (N50 = 253.6 Mb) and annotation completeness. Through the analysis of this genome and population resequence data, we examine the history of repetitive element accumulation, identify the X chromosome, and propose a hypothesis for the evolutionary history of fusions between autosomes and the X that led to the sex chromosomes of A. sagrei .

• Publication year

  2022

• Venue

  Communications Biology

• Publication date

  2022-10-25

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/s42003-022-04074-5PMID 36284162PMCID 9596491
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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