The Antarctic intertidal zone is continuously subject to extreme fluctuations in biotic and abiotic stressors, and the West Antarctic Peninsula is the most rapidly warming region on earth. Organisms living in Antarctic intertidal pools are therefore of great interest for research on topics such as evolutionary adaptation to extreme environments and the effects of climate change.
Here, we report the whole-genome sequence of the Antarctic endemic Harpacticoid copepod, Tigriopus kingsejongensis with a total of 37 Gb raw DNA sequence using Illumina Miseq platform and the libraries were prepared with 65-fold coverage with a total length of 295 Mb. The final assembly consists of 48,368 contigs with an N50 contig length of 17.5 kb and 27,823 scaffolds with N50 contig length of 159.2 kb and a total of 12,772 coding genes were inferred using the MAKER annotation pipeline approach. Comparative genome analysis revealed that T. kingsejongensis specific genes are enriched in transport and metabolism processes. Furthermore, rapidly evolving genes related to energy metabolism showed signatures of positive selection.
The genome of T. kingsejongensis will provide an interesting example of an evolutionary strategy for Antarctic cold adaptation, and offers new genetic insights into Antarctic intertidal biota.

Keywords:

• Copepoda
• Genome
• Antarctic
• adaptation
• Tigriopus

Read the peer-reviewed publication(s):

(PubMed: 28369352)

Accessions (data generated as part of this study):

BioProject: PRJNA349776
BioProject: PRJNA307207
BioProject: PRJNA307513