Chinese softshell turtle assembly and gene annotation

Assembly

The Chinese softshell turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) genome was produced by the RIKEN institute. The genome is 2.1Gb in length; composed of 205,379 contigs with an N50 value of 22kb and 19,903 scaffolds with an N50 value of 3.37Mb.

Gene annotation

The gene set was built using a mixed approach. Due to the lack of species specific sequences and the availability of RNASeq data for Chinese softshell turtle from RIKEN and BGI Institutes, the final gene set comprises of models based orthologous proteins from the vertebrate division of UniProtKB in addition to models from RNASeq data. The RNASeq data contained samples from TK7, TK9, TK11, TK13, TK15, TK17, TK23, gastrula and neurula developmental stages, together with pooled data set and combined data from all nine stages. 8,070 gene models were made exclusively from RNASeq data. The data was also used to add UTR to gene models.

RNASeq data set

In addition to the main set, we have predicted gene models for each tissue type using the RNASeq pipeline. We did a BLASTp of these models against UniProt proteins with protein existence level 1 and 2 in order to confirm the open reading frame (ORF). The best BLAST hit is displayed as a transcript supporting evidence.

The tissue-specific sets of transcript models built using our RNAseq pipeline are as follows:

• Detailed information on genebuild (PDF)

More information

General information about this species can be found in Wikipedia.