Acropora intermedia genome

The genus Acropora, notable for its diversity and widespread distribution, has recently garnered significant attention, serving as a key model for coral conservation and restoration. Acropora intermedia Brook 1891, a common species in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, exhibits enhanced resistance to both thermal and acid stress. To advance future conservation and molecular studies, we reported an improved high-quality genome assembly for A. intermedia obtained through PacBio Hi-Fi long-read sequencing, with a total genome size of 473 Mb. Compared to the previous version, our assembly shows substantial improvements in contiguity, with the Contig N50 increasing from 40.3 Kb to 2.9 Mb, and the total number of scaffolds decreasing from 6,224 to 633. Specifically, our genome exhibits no uncalled bases (N's) per 100 Kbp, a number remarkably lower than the previous version (5,276.11 per 100 Kbp) The percentage of genome assembly completeness evaluation based on Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) has increased from 90.6% to 92.6%. We predict a total of 26,859 protein-coding genes, with a BUSCO completeness of 95.7%, marking a 2.7% increase from the previous assembly. Our assembly provides a valuable resource for in-depth studies of coral adaptation mechanisms under climate change and facilitates comparative analyses and evolutionary studies of Acropora corals.