Gopherus evgoodei (Goode's thornscrub tortoise) genome sequencing and assembly, alternate haplotype, v1. Gopherus evgoodei

The Goode's Thornscrub Tortoise is a new species of Desert Tortoise discovered in 2016 in Sinaloa Mexico. Gopher tortoises are named because of their ability to dig large and deep burrows. This reference assembly of has been produced as part of the G10K-VGP Project. The sample was collected by geneticist Taylor Edwards. The samples were processed and sequenced at the Rockefeller University Vertebrate Genome lab led by Oliver Fedrigo. Genome assembly was conducted by the G10K-VGP group, specifically by Arang Rhie and Sergey Koren of Adam Phillippy's lab at NIH. Manual curation of chromosomes and other genomic features was conducted by the gEVAL group led by Kerstin Howe at the Sanger Institute, Harris Lewin and Joanna Damas at UC Davis, and the Phillippy Lab. The primary haplotype contains the longest contigs of the Pacbio FALCON unzip assembly, scaffolded with 10X linked reads, Bionano optical maps, and Arima HiC reads, with multiple tools to further separate out haplotypes. Funding was provided by Robert Murphy from University of Toronto, HHMI and by Rockefeller start-up funds to Erich Jarvis, and individual grants and awards to the persons listed above. Released from embargo April 29, 2021 in Rhie et al Nature. 2021 7856:737-746.