Supporting data for the draft genome of the Northern snakehead, Channa argus.

The Northern snakehead (Channa argus), a member of Channidae family in Perciformes, is an economically important freshwater fish with its main distributions in Asian and African countries. In North America, it has become notorious as an intentionally released invasive species. Its ability to breathe air with gills and migrate short distances over land makes it a good model for bimodal breath research. Therefore, recent researches have been focused on the identification of relevant candidate genes. Here, we performed whole genome sequencing of C. argus to construct its draft genome, aiming to offer useful information for further functional studies and identification of target genes related to air breathing, a distinguished feature of this teleost fish.<br>
We assembled the C. argus genome with a total of 140.3 Gigabases (Gb) of raw reads, which were sequenced by the Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. The final draft genome assembly is approximately 615.3 million bases (Mb), with contig N50 of 81.4 kb and scaffold N50 of 4.5 Mb. The identified repeat sequences account for 18.9% of the whole genome. We also predicted 19,877 protein-coding genes within the genome assembly, with an average of 10.5 exons per gene.