De novo whole-genome assembly of a wild type yeast, Candida vartiovaarae DDNA#1, using nanopore sequencing.

The introduction of the MinIONtm sequencing device by Oxford Nanopore Technologies may greatly accelerate whole genome sequencing. In this study we used this new technology to sequence and de novo assemble the genome of a recently isolated ethanologenic yeast strain and compared the results with those obtained by classical Illumina short read sequencing. This strain was originally named Candida vartiovaarae (Torulopsis vartiovaarae) based on ribosomal RNA sequencing. We show that the assembly using nanopore data is much more contiguous than the assembly using short read data. We also compared various technical and software developments for the nanopore sequencing protocol showing that the R9 chemistry is, as predicted, higher in quality than R7.3 chemistry. The R9 chemistry is an essential improvement for assembly of the extremely AT-rich mitochondrial genome. The mitochondrial and chromosomal genome sequences showed that this strain is clearly distinct from other yeast taxons and most closely related to published Cyberlindnera species. In conclusion, MinION-mediated long read sequencing can be used for high quality de novo assembly of new eukaryotic microbial genomes.