Improved chromosomal-level genome assembly and re-annotation of leopard coral grouper

Plectropomus leopardus, as known as leopard coral grouper, is a valuable marine fish that has gradually been bred artificially. To promote future conservation, molecular breeding, and comparative studies, we generated an improved high-quality chromosomal-level genome assembly of leopard coral grouper using Nanopore long-reads, Illumina short reads, and the Hi-C sequencing data. The draft genome is 849.74 Mb with 45 contigs and N50 of 35.59 Mb. Finally, a total of 846.49 Mb corresponding to 99.6% of the contig sequences was anchored to 24 pseudo-chromosomes using Hi-C technology. A final set of 25,965 genes is annotated after manual curation of the predicted gene models, and BUSCO analysis yielded a completeness score of 99.5%. This study significantly improves the utility of the grouper genome and provided a reference for the study of molecular breeding, genomics and biology in this species.