urial (Ovis vignei) Scaffold-level genomic draft

the Urial (Ovis vignei) inhabits arid mountainous regions in Central and South Asia and is distinguished by its relatively large body size and strong ecological adaptability. As one of the major wild progenitors of domestic sheep (Ovis aries), the Urial provides valuable insights into the genetic basis of phenotypic shifts during domestication, particularly in traits like body size reduction . However, the absence of a high-quality reference genome for this species has hindered investigations into its evolutionary divergence from domestic sheep and the genomic architecture of its adaptive traits. With recent advances in long-read sequencing and structural variant (SV) detection, it is now feasible to generate near-complete genomes and identify key functional variants linked to complex traits . In this study, we constructed a chromosome-level genome of O. vignei using Nanopore long reads and Illumina short reads, with the aim of filling this genomic gap and uncovering candidate loci associated with morphological changes during sheep domestication.