Chromosome-level genome assembly and annotation of Barbel chub Squaliobarbus curriculus

The barbel chub Squaliobarbus curriculus, is an economically important freshwater fish in China. The fishery production of the wild populations has declined dramatically, making the development of aquaculture urgently needed. However, the lack of high-quality genome has impeded its artificial breeding and genetic breeding. Herein, we present a chromosome-level genome assembly for S. curriculus by combining HiFi sequencing, Hi-C sequencing, Iso-seq and short-reads RNA-seq data. This assembly was 910.27 Mb in size, with a contig N50 length of 34.70 Mb. 99.50% of the assembled sequences were placed onto 24 chromosomes supported by Hi-C contact map. Using Iso-seq and short-reads RNA-seq data, we identified 28,329 protein-coding genes based on three prediction methods. Of these genes, 27,207 genes (96.04%) were functionally annotated to at least one of the six commonly used databases. Additionally, we annotated 2,041 miRNAs, 16,426 tRNAs, 5,488 rRNAs and 1,536 snRNAs in the S. curriculus genome. Overall, the chromosome-level genome of S. curriculus will provide valuable genomic resources for genetic breeding, population genomics, sex-related marker identifications, and other future studies.