The first haplotype-resolved chromosome-scale genome assembly for the bighead catfish (Clarias macrocephalus), a freshwater species native to Thailand and Vietnam, which has importance in aquaculture and conservation, is presented here. The 880 Mb genome was assembled using high-fidelity long-read sequencing from Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore Technologies, which was scaffolded using high-throughput chromosome conformation capture data, and polished with Illumina short-read sequencing. The assembly, which spans 27 pseudo-chromosomes, demonstrates high completeness and continuity, with a scaffold N50 of 33.48 Mb, 95.5% completeness based on Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO), and a quality value (QV) of 50. This genomic resource provides a foundation for studying aquaculture traits, genetic diversity, and structural variation of the bighead catfish and supports efforts in their selective breeding, conservation, and sustainable aquaculture in Southeast Asia.
Andres et al. (Wed,) studied this question.