Chromosome-level genome assembly and annotation of the moon jellyfish Aurelia coerulea

Aurelia coerulea (moon jellyfish), an early-diverging metazoan in the phylum Cnidarian, possesses key features pertinent to understanding the evolutionary origins of nervous systems. However, genomic resources for this species have been limited. Here, we employed a combination of long-read sequencing, short-read sequencing, and Hi-C chromatin conformation capture techniques to generate a chromosome-level assembly of the A. coerulea genome. The final assembly comprises approximately 554 Mb distributed across 21 chromosomes, achieving a scaffold N50 of 24 Mb and demonstrating high completeness (protein BUSCO score: 93.1%). Approximately 71.8% of the genome consists of transposable elements. We identified 26,777 protein-coding genes, of which approximately 72.28% have been functionally annotated. This chromosome-level genome provides an essential resource for elucidating early neural evolution and advancing our understanding of cnidarian biology.