Chromosome-level genome assembly of the Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul)

This study presents a chromosome-level genome assembly of the Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul) from a individual in Qinghai, integrating PacBio HiFi long-read sequencing, Illumina short-read sequencing, and Hi-C chromatin interaction mapping. Muscle tissue samples (Sample ID: FSD0220013820–1A) were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, with DNA extraction and quality assessment conducted by Novogene Bioinformatics Technology Co., Ltd. A total of 134 Gb PacBio HiFi reads were generated on the Sequel II platform, while Illumina libraries (350 bp insert size) and Hi-C libraries (using Mbol digestion) were sequenced with PE150 reads. The genome was assembled using hifasm, polished with Pilon, Racon, Arrow, and NextPolish, and scaffolded into 19 pseudo-chromosomes via HiCUP and ALLHIC, achieving 98.02% anchoring rate. The assembly exhibits high completeness (97.6% BUSCO score) and accuracy (Mercury QV = 50.46). Genome annotation identified 41.09% transposable elements and 22,699 protein-coding genes, with functional annotations covering 90.37% of genes. The dataset includes genome sequences, annotation files, and raw sequencing data.