A hybrid genome assembly of the endangered aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

Abstract

The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is the only extant member of the Daubentoniidae primate family. Although several reference genomes exist for this endangered strepsirrhine primate, the predominant usage of short-read sequencing has resulted in limited assembly contiguity and completeness, and no protein-coding gene annotations have yet been released. Here, we present a novel, fully annotated, chromosome-level hybrid de novo assembly for the species based on a combination of Oxford Nanopore Technologies long-reads and Illumina short-reads, and scaffolded using genome-wide chromatin interaction data – a community resource that will improve future conservation efforts as well as primate comparative analyses.