Asparagopsis taxiformis Lineage 6 Genome

The red seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis (Bonnemaisoniaceae, Rhodophyta) produces bioactive natural products that, when fed to cattle and sheep, reduces methane emissions. In this dataset, we present the first draft genome for A. taxiformis Lineage 6. This is the specific lineage upon which the original discovery work on methane reduction was conducted (WO2015109362A2 - Method for reducing total gas production and/or methane production in a ruminant animal); a lineage that is native to Queensland, Australia. The genome has a size of 142 Mb and contains 70.67% repeat regions and approximately 10,867 protein-coding genes, including those associated with secondary metabolism, photosynthesis and defence. In brief, the filamentous diploid stage (sporophyte) of Asparagopsis taxiformis Lineage 6 was used for genome sequencing. The sample was originally collected from Moffat Beach, Sunshine Coast (30/07/2019) and maintained in sterile seawater culture prior to sequencing. A hybrid sequencing strategy was used, combining long reads from PacBio sequencing and short reads from BGI DNBSeq sequencing. The genome assembly is provided in Fasta format (plain text).