Genome assembly of the acoel flatworm Symsagittifera roscoffensis

Symsagittifera roscoffensis is a well-known member of the order Acoela that lives in symbiosis with the algae Tetraselmis convolutae during its adult stage. Its natural habitat is the eastern coast of the Atlantic, where thousands of individuals can be found lying in large pools in the sand at low tide. As a member of the Acoela it has been used as a proxy for early bilaterian animals; however, its phylogenetic position remains debatable. In order to understand the basic structural characteristics of the acoel genome, we sequenced and assembled the genome of aposymbiotic S. roscoffensis.