Manis pentadactyla (Chinese pangolin) genome, mManPen7

The Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is native to the northern Indian subcontinent, northern parts of Southeast Asia and southern China. It is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2014, as the wild population is estimated to have declined by more than 80% in three pangolin generations, equal to 21 years. It is threatened by poaching for the illegal wildlife trade (from Wikipedia entry). This sample is from a cultured fibroblast cell line generated by William J Murphy in 2007, expanded for this project in 2020, and originally collected from the skin a male at Taipei Zoo, in Taipei, China, and then used to generate a high-quality reference for a COVID-19 project and the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP). Karyotyping, by Terje Raudsepp at Texas A&M University Molecular Cytogenetics core, revealed little to no polyploidy in the cultured cells. Sequencing and genome assembly were conducted at the Vertebrate Genomes Lab (VGL) at the Rockefeller University, led by Olivier Fedrigo and Erich D. Jarvis, with support by Jarvis from a COVID-19 research project. The genome is freely available to use upon public release in NCBI.

中华穿山甲（Manis pentadactyla）原产于印度次大陆北部、东南亚北部及中国南部。该物种自2014年起被列入《世界自然保护联盟（International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN）红色名录》极危等级，据估算其野生种群在三个穿山甲世代（约21年）内种群数量下降幅度超过80%。其生存面临非法野生动物贸易引发的偷猎威胁（本段内容来自维基百科词条）。
本样本来源于2007年由William J Murphy构建的体外培养成纤维细胞系（cultured fibroblast cell line），2020年为本研究完成细胞扩增；其原始样本采集自中国台北市台北动物园的一只雄性个体的皮肤，该细胞系曾被用于生成新冠疫情研究项目及脊椎动物基因组计划（Vertebrate Genomes Project, VGP）的高质量参考基因组。
得克萨斯农工大学分子细胞遗传学核心实验室的Terje Raudsepp通过核型分析（karyotyping）发现，该体外培养细胞几乎不存在多倍体（polyploidy）现象。测序及基因组组装工作由洛克菲勒大学脊椎动物基因组实验室（Vertebrate Genomes Lab, VGL）承担，由Olivier Fedrigo与Erich D. Jarvis领衔，该项目得到了Jarvis新冠研究项目的资助。该基因组在国家生物技术信息中心（National Center for Biotechnology Information, NCBI）公开发布后可免费获取使用。