De-novo Genome of the Edwardsiid anthozoan Edwardsia elegans

Cnidarian genomes have helped shed light on the genomic variation and diversity found within the animal kingdom. Despite this there is a lack of genomic data for cnidarians, hindering our ability to compare genomic variation between cnidarian species. Here we sequence the first genome for Edwardsia elegans , a sea anemone in the largest genus of the Edwardsiidae family. The genome is 396Mb long and is predicted to have approximately 49,000 proteins. We find large conservation of macrosynteny between E. elegans and other Edwardsiidae anemones. Along with conservation of macrosyntenic regions we find conservation of both microRNAs and Ultra conserved noncoding elements previously found in other cnidarians species. We also show both conservation and variation in gene order for important developmental genes, highlighting the importance of using more than a single species when doing genomic comparisons.