Draft genomic and transcriptome resources for marine chelicerate Tachypleus tridentatus.

ABSTRACT

Chinese horseshoe crabs (Tachypleus tridentatus), ancient marine arthropods dating back to the mid-Palaeozoic Era, have provided valuable resources for the detection of bacterial or fungal contamination. However, excessive exploitation for the amoebocyte lysate of Tachypleus has dramatically decreased the population of the Chinese horseshoe crabs. Thus, we present sequencing, assembly and annotation of T. tridentatus, with the hope of understanding the genomic feature of the living fossil and assisting scientists with the protection of this endangered species. The final genome contained a total size of 1.943 Gb, covering 90.23% of the estimated genome size. The transcriptome of three larval stages was constructed to investigate the candidate gene involved in the larval development and validate annotation. The completeness of the genome and gene models was estimated by BUSCO, reaching 96.2% and 95.4%, respectively. The synonymous substitution distribution of paralogues revealed that T. tridentatus had undergone two rounds of whole-genome duplication. All genomic and transcriptome data have been deposited in public databases, ready to be used by researchers working on horseshoe crabs.