Supporting data for "A high-quality, long-read genome assembly of the endangered ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta)"

The ring-tailed lemur (<i>Lemur catta</i>) is a charismatic strepsirrhine primate endemic to the island of Madagascar. These lemurs are of particular interest, given their status as a flagship species and widespread publicility in popular media. Unfortunately, a recent population decline has caused the census population to fall below 2500 individuals in the wild, and their classification as an endangered species by the IUCN. As is the case for most strepsirrhine primates, only a limited amount of genomic research has been conducted on <i>L. catta</i>, in part due to the lack of genomic resources. We generated a new high-quality reference genome assembly for <i>L. catta</i> (mLemCat1) that conforms to the standards of the Vertebrate Genomes Project. This new long-read assembly is composed of PacBio continuous long reads (CLR reads), Optical Mapping Bionano reads, Arima HiC data, and 10X linked-reads. The contiguity and completeness of the assembly is extremely high, with scaffold and contig N50 values of 90.982 Mbp and 10.570 Mbp, respectively. Additionally, when compared to other high-quality primate assemblies, <i>L. catta</i> has the lowest reported number of Alu elements, which results predominantly from a lack of AluS and AluY elements. mLemCat1 is an excellent genomic resource not only for the ring-tailed lemur community, but also for other members of the Lemuridae family and is the first very long read assembly for a strepsirrhine.