Mytella strigata, a bivalve mollusk native to the Atlantic coast of South America, has recently become a globally significant marine invasive species, posing serious threats to native ecosystems and aquaculture operations. Here, we report a haplotype-resolved, chromosome-level genome assembly of M. strigata (2n = 30), generated using high-fidelity (HiFi) long-read sequencing and high-throughput chromosome conformation capture (Hi-C). Two haplotypes were independently assembled: haplotype 1 (Hap1) spans 692.37 Mb with a contig N50 of 6.93 Mb, and haplotype 2 (Hap2) spans 683.91 Mb with a contig N50 of 7.61 Mb. Both assemblies were anchored to 15 chromosomes, achieving anchoring rates of 93.84% (Hap1) and 97.08% (Hap2). Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) analysis revealed high completeness, identifying 92.33% and 93.22% of expected single-copy orthologs in Hap1 and Hap2, respectively. We annotated 27,887 protein-coding genes and conducted analyses of gene functions. This high-quality genomic resource provides a foundation for investigating the genetic mechanisms underlying invasiveness and environmental adaptability in M. strigata.
Zhang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.