Sphaerospora molnari isolate:F3C1_2 Genome sequencing. Sphaerospora molnari isolate:F3C1_2

Myxozoans are metazoan parasites that evolved from their free-living cnidarian ancestors to obligate microscopic endoparasites around 600 mya. In addition to their fascinating evolutionary history, they are of interest to many scientists because some cause serious diseases in farmed fish and wild fish populations. Sphaerospora molnari is a myxozoan parasite that infects carp and causes mortality in central European pond cultures. We sequenced and analyzed genomic and transcriptomic data from S. molnari and combined our results with existing omics datasets from cnidarians to understand which functional gene groups are associated with successful parasitic strategies in S. molnari and in myxozoans in general. We combined two different technologies: PromethION-Oxford Nanopore and Illumina, to be able to analyze the highly derived myxozoan genome and its structure. We also used a combination of commonly used algorithms, custom-made scripts and pipelines for assembly, structural and functional annotation of the genome. We performed comparative genome analysis using datasets from free-living cnidarians and myxozoans to describe Myxozoan linage specific genes. Our results showed that most myxozoan lineage-specific genes are related to parasitic strategies, and many of them are duplicated in the S. molnari genome.