De novo assembly of a female gorilla genome (Susie) using PacBio WGS and FALCON assembler.. SMRT Assembly of the Gorilla Genome

We generated 71-fold (100 raw) SMRT sequence coverage from the Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) genome using PBL DNA prepared from a female specimen (Susie, Lincoln Park Zoo). The average SMRT subread length was 12.8 kbp and we utilized FALCON (v.0.3.0) to generate an assembly of 3.1 Gbp with an initial contig N50 of 10.1 Mbp (Susie3). Compared to gorGor3, Susie3 represents an astounding decrease in assembly fragmentation: 464,875 to 15,999 contigs, a >96% reduction in total contig number.