An improved chromosomal-scale genome assembly of the Tanaka's snailfish (Liparis tanakae)

As one of the top predators in the Yellow Sea, the Tanaka's snailfish (Liparis tanakae) plays an important ecological role in maintaining the structure and function of the ecosystem. This species also has fast and strong adaptability to external pressures such as climate change and fishing activities. To facilitate further molecular evolution researches of L. tanakae, we generated a chromosome-scale genome assembly in this study. The final assembly yielded 574.44 Mb in total length, with a scaffold N50 of 24.64 Mb, and anchored 97.87% of the sequences into 24 pseudo-chromosomes. Our assembly was 20.18 Mb longer than the reference genome (Tanakav1) in total length, with higher scaffold N50 and fewer scaffolds. The BUSCO score of 97.3% and Merqury quality value of 36.98 revealed high completeness and accuracy of our assembly. The genome contained 20,933 predicted protein-coding genes and 28.28% of the assembly was annotated as repetitive sequences. This study significantly advances the genomic resources for L. tanakae and facilitates future adaptation and evolution researches of this species.