Sarcocystis neurona isolate:SN3_V2 Genome sequencing and assembly

Sarcocystis is one of the largest and most successful genera of phylum Apicomplexa with all vertebrates being susceptible hosts. There are currently 196 named species within this genus. Sarcocystis neurona is the most well studied and representative member of genus Sarcocystis. Also residing within family Sarcocystidae is the much more thoroughly studied Toxoplasma gondii. In the past, an assumption of genomic similarity has been made when assessing the gene structure and repertoire of S. neurona. The two genera are estimated to have diverged ~250 million years ago. We have generated an updated reference genome for S. neurona SN3 using long read technologies and scaffolding supported by chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C). Gene structures are now supported by short and long-read transcriptomic evidence derived from different timepoints of the organism itself. These annotations have been extensively manually curated to ensure biological peculiarities specific to S. neurona remain intact. No telomeres matching clade Eucoccidiorida or otherwise could be determined, although several assembled scaffolds approach expected chromosome length are present.