Draft genome and de novo transcriptome assembly of the Antarctic marine flatworm Obrimoposthia wandeli

TL;DR

This paper provides the first draft genome and transcriptome of a marine flatworm from Antarctica, offering insights into its adaptation to extreme environments.

Contribution

The study presents the first genomic and transcriptomic resources for the Antarctic marine flatworm Obrimoposthia wandeli.

Findings

The draft genome assembly spans 1.35 Gb with an N50 of 343,088 bp and 48,310 predicted genes.

The transcriptome identified 26,169 non-redundant transcripts with 93.1% BUSCO completeness.

Abstract

Obrimoposthia wandeli is the most abundant marine planarian in the intertidal zone of the maritime Antarctic region and is presumed to have adapted to the extreme conditions of the Southern Ocean. However, genomic studies on marine flatworms remain extremely limited, with only one marine planarian genome currently available in public databases. We present the first draft genome and de novo transcriptome assembly of O. wandeli from Antarctica, providing a valuable genomic resource for the study of flatworm biology and environmental adaptation under harsh environments.

We sequenced the genome and transcriptome of O. wandeli collected near King Sejong Station using Oxford Nanopore long-read, Illumina paired-end, and RNA sequencing. The draft genome assembly spans 1.35 Gb across 6,912 contigs, with an N50 of 343,088 bp and an estimated 48,310 predicted genes. The assembly showed Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) completeness scores of 80.2% (genome) and 80.8% (proteins). The de novo transcriptome assembly identified 26,169 non-redundant transcripts, with a BUSCO completeness of 93.1%. These genomic and transcriptomic datasets represent the first Antarctic marine planarian reference and provide a valuable resource for studying marine flatworm genomics.